We Are Three
by WithAplomb
Summary: When a night together leaves Bella pregnant B&E find themselves embarking on a romance and preparation for the baby. Can their burgeoning relationship survive the pressure of parenthood, careers and family interference? Canon pairings. AU. AH.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One - Bella**

**When Bella tells Edward**

"Uh, yeah, hi. Can I speak to Dr Edward Cullen please?" My fingers nails tapped on my kitchen table in no particular rhythm. I just liked the noise they made. Usually my nails aren't long enough to tap on anything. The tap-tap-tap distracted me from the muzak currently playing down my phone as I sat on hold, waiting to speak to the man I had met last month.

"Dr Cullen." He answered the phone and I swooned a little at the sound of his voice. Trying to shake myself out of it I cleared my throat and shook my head. His voice is part of why I ended up in this mess.

"Hi, Edward? It's Bella. Bella Swan?"

"Right, hi." I could hear his smile, but I could also hear the confusion.

"So, I'm sorry I'm calling you at work but I lost your other number and I remembered where you said you worked, so..."

"I'm really glad you called, Bella." I laughed internally. Scoffed is a more apt term for what I did. He wasn't going to be so pleased once I tell him the truth of why I'm calling.

"Right. We need to talk. I, God, there's no easy way to say it." I rambled, completely out of my depth and feeling sick to my stomach. "Well, Edward, I'm pregnant."

I could hear the hospital behind him. I could hear his staggered breathing. I'm pretty sure I heard him smack his head into a wall, having lost the ability to hold it up. I know this last one because that was my reaction too.

"But we used protection. I put the..." His voice lowered for the rest of the sentence which only served to make me swoony again because that's the voice he used when he was whispering dirty words into my ear when I had my third orgasm that night. "... condom on myself."

"I know, I saw you do it." I had to shake my head to get that image out of my mind. "I don't know what to say, apparently they only work 99% of the time. Did you know they put that on the side of the box?"

"I know." He sighed. "I just never thought I would be the 1%."

"Tell me about it."...stud. Because, apparently, when my life goes tits up I internally quote lines from Grease.

"Well, I can't really talk about this right now, because of work, but give me your number and I'll call you when I finish."

Feeling like a complete shit after throwing this at him when he was in the middle of work I recited my number before hanging up. He promised to give me a call as soon as he was able. Part of me thought that perhaps he was running into the HR department and begging them for a transfer as far away as possible. I wouldn't blame him. We spent one night together, one holy-shit-this-is-fantastical night that left me with wobbly legs and a desire to somehow surgically attach him to me so that he could do that to me again. But that was all, if I were him I'd be getting the hell out of dodge.

Cradling my head in my hands I stared down at the wood of the table, scanning along the grain and back again. I let out a frustrated sigh that started deep in my toes. Blinking away the tears I tried to focus on anything but my "situation". My eyes stopped scanning the table when I realised that the natural grain in my driftwood table made a heart.

I stared at that heart for four hours until he called.

**A/N: Hello and welcome to my new story.**

**1. Yes, she is pregnant, it isn't a false alarm.**

**2. This story is about love mostly, the building of a new relationship and the trials and tribulations that accompany that.**

**3. I understand that not everybody loves a pregnant Bella story and if you want to quit reading now I bear you no ill will...but I would rather this not be defined by the fact that she is preggers when it's all about Bella and Edward.**

**4. This is rated M because I tend to pepper my writing with expletives...and there will be some intimate moments (yes, I mean groping and sexing).  
**

**5. I'm not going to commit to an update schedule but it will be as often as possible. **

**6. I'm proper rubbish at the whole summary stuff...apologies.**

**7. I'm even worse at picking a title...apologies again.  
**

**8. I'm flying without a Beta, I don't really know how that whole thing works, if you want to offer your services etc then let me know :D**

**9. I really really really hope you enjoy this :D**

**10. I'm on twitter, it's not interesting and pretty much not twilight related but you are welcome to follow my inane ramblings /WithAplomb.  
**


	2. When Bella Tells Emmett

**Chapter 2 – Bella**

**When Bella tells Emmett**

"Isabella Marie Swan! If you don't move your ass and come down stairs then I cannot be held responsible for what I do to you." Rosalie screamed up the stairs. I heard her through my closed solid door. The woman had lungs.

"Better listen to her Bells." Called a cheerful Emmett. Sighing I covered my face with a pillow and screamed.

I had been doing that a lot lately, sighing and screaming into pillows, into shoulders, into my own hands, into empty dark rooms. Finding the energy to fall out of bed I shuffled along the floor in my fluffy bed socks. It took all of my energy to stand up straight, never mind actually bend my knees and lift my feet properly. The pregnancy can't be sapping my energy to this extent already, I didn't know what was causing this.

Wrenching my door open, the smell of pancakes and bacon assaulted my nose. My stomach actually screamed at me to move faster. With one hand on my wall I let it guide me along the hall to the top of the stairs. I could hear Rosalie and Emmett moving around in my kitchen. I had to remember to take my keys back from them to negate the risk of any further screaming wake up calls.

After stumbling down the stairs without removing my hand from the wall I made the turn into the kitchen where Emmett immediately scooped me into a bear hug as a greeting.

"Oooof." I hit his giant bicep pathetically to make him let me go, when in actual fact I always loved my Emmett bear hugs.

"I know, I know. I always take your breath away." He snickered, setting my feet gently back onto the floor.

"Morning." I grinned and rolled my eyes.

"Finally, she arises from the crypt." Rosalie huffed at me, throwing me a smile to let me know she was teasing. "Sit your pretty ass down and eat." Her hand gestured to the table where my eyes danced from plate to plate, trying to comprehend the absolute feast that was in front of me.

"You guys did this?"

"No, the breakfast fairies did this." Rosalie's fingers stroked gently through my hair as she passed to put another plate full of food on the table.

"Jesus, I didn't realise how domesticated living with Emmett had made you."

"Yeah, well, if you live with a man incapable of realising there are methods of cooking other than pouring boiling water into a plastic container or throwing something in the microwave you get to the learning pretty fast." Her tone was all Rosalie, but her eyes crinkled at the sides and a smirk ghosted over her lips.

We had been roommates since college. Hers was the first new face I encountered when I moved into the dorm at the University of Washington, granted it wasn't the most welcoming of faces but it had certainly been the most beautiful. She looked like Giselle Bundchen even on her very worst day. As sickening as this fact is I couldn't help but love her when she revealed a bag full of cookies, a bottle of wine and a box full of DVDs for us to bond over on day four of our co-habitation.

"_I've been a heinous bitch to you Bella Swan, and I'm sorry." She had told me, throwing over a cookie and putting a DVD on. "I've been scared, this is all so new, and you've been nothing but lovely. My go to emotion is bitch when I'm scared." She had shrugged, tucking her long golden legs under herself as we curled up onto the couch._

"_Apology accepted." I had mumbled through a mouthful of cookie and that was that. Friends. _

My stomach growled loudly at me so I ripped a pancake in half with my fingers and threw it into my mouth. The subtle taste of cinnamon tickled my taste buds and it was just too good to have only half in my mouth at a time. After stuffing the remaining half into my mouth I groaned at how good they were.

"Hungry?"

"Eating for two here, don't you judge me." Emmett's eyebrows almost flew entirely off his face as his mouth dropped open in shock. "Oops, Rose didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't." He glared at his fiancé for a second before turning back to me. "What the fuck?"

"Emmett." Rosalie growled in warning.

"No, Bella is my family, Rose. She's practically my sister." His searching eyes never left my face. "How the hell did this happen? You haven't gotten laid in years!"

"Bloody hell, Emmett." I shook my head. "You remember when we all went out last month? You and Rose were pretty distracted by each other and I met a guy. I bet you didn't even realise I had left."

"Well, no, I didn't realise, but if I had known some guy was hitting on you I would have had a word with him."

I knew what Emmett meant by "having a word" with someone and it usually resulted in men sprinting in the opposite direction with faces covered in their own tears. He was a hulking great brute of a man. He was a quarterback for the Seahawks. Men quivered when he walked past them, let alone when he has a word with them.

"You're almost twenty eight years old, have you never heard of condoms?"

"I'm not retarded, or irresponsible. Neither is he. We used protection, but it's only effective 99% of the time."

"Really?" His face was a picture, and if it hadn't been for the fact that this was a serious matter I would have dissolved in giggles. As it was I had trouble keeping the smirk off my face. "Did you know this?" He looked at Rosalie wide eyed and she snickered.

"Yes, honey, I did. That's why I'm on the pill." Rolling her eyes she went back to the cooker, concentrating a little too hard on the scrambled eggs, with her shoulders shaking slightly.

"Don't think you're off the hook for not telling me." He narrowed his eyes half heartedly at her back before his head cocked and he looked at her jean clad ass for a second before returning his attention to me.

I had to admit, I was shocked that she hadn't told him either. How she had managed to get him over to my house at this time of the morning to cook me breakfast without knowing the reason I would never know. No, correction, I would never want to know. Once, she had started to tell me about the ways she gets him to do stuff for her and it took me months to forget that she had revealed my childhood friend could bend like that.

Rosalie had spent the whole day with me on P-Day. Immediately leaving work and tearing over to me in her cherry red BMW, narrowly avoiding a speeding ticket and stopping to buy eleven pregnancy tests on the way. She held my hand, stroked my hair and smoothed my worried forehead as I lamented my own stupidity.

She had reassured me that this kind of thing happened. That we were careful and there is no blame to be placed. She would have held that stick under my stream of pee if I had needed her to, not that I would ever have asked, because she was my best friend and that's what best friends do.

Emmett took my plate from the table and started to heap food onto it, bacon was joined by another bundle of pancakes which was accompanied by a couple of sausages which was hidden under a giant mound of scrambled eggs. Food was threatening to topple off the sides of the plate before he placed it back in front of me.

"Eat."

"I'm eating for two, not an army."

"If you think Uncle Emmett is going to let Baby starve, you are sadly mistaken." Then he winked at me.

Then I cried.

Then Rosalie shouted at Emmett.

Then I cried again.

Then, finally, I was calm enough to call in sick to work.

I slept on the couch after breakfast, curled up into Emmett's side with his arm wrapped protectively around me. Ever since we were kids he was my protector. My Mom had left and Dad worked so much, I was always at his house, always by his side. There was only a year between us but he called me his baby sister and I liked it. It made me feel loved. Not that there was ever any doubt that my Dad loved me, but Mom leaving us without looking back had left a gaping wound in my heart and Emmett tried every single day to make it better.

When he had left for college I was heartbroken. He only went to Seattle but it felt like he had fallen off the face of the earth. I was trapped in Forks with no friends because the only people I hung out with were Emmett and his senior classmates. I had even dated a few of them. But then graduation came and I was left alone.

We were finally reunited the summer after I graduated and I had happily waved my acceptance to UW in his beaming face. I introduced him to Rose early in out freshman year and then we were three. Rose and I had moved into the house I inherited from my Grandmother and Emmett had been happy to remain with his college buddies not too far away until a few months ago when he had finally proposed and they moved in together. Leaving me to rattle about in my big house, which I actually really didn't mind.

Rosalie wasn't there to yell at me when I left my shoes at the front door, or to moan at me because I used all the pots cooking a meal for us and then didn't clean them up. Apparently she had never heard of the old adage of whoever cooks doesn't clean. She bought a dishwasher after I recited it to her a couple of times.

The television hummed softly in the background when I slowly came back to consciousness, Emmett and Rosalie mumbling softly over the top of my head. Rosalie had curled herself into my other side, her hands resting on my flat stomach. I brought my hands down to cover hers and smiled.

No matter how this ends up, Baby will be loved. About that I had no doubt.

"When are you meeting Edward, Bella?"

"Tomorrow, I invited him here, discussing this over brunch somewhere just seemed a bit..." I couldn't finish the sentence because I didn't know what it was. Was it unseemly? Inappropriate? Uncouth? Improper? Indecorous? Unbecoming? Tasteless? All of the above?

"Edward, huh?" Emmett said, trying to convey no emotion.

"Emmett McCarty, don't you even think about being here tomorrow." I warned him, pushing my hand against his side to lever myself up to look him straight in the face so he knew I was serious.

"Fine." He huffed. "But, you call me the second you need me, understand?"

I nodded.

Then I cried again because he unconditionally loved me so much.

"Stop making the girl cry." Rosalie muttered, her hand wrapping around my head to press into her shoulder.

"Have you thought about...y'know...your options?" Emmett was never one to flinch from the questions that needed asked. There would be no point being a mind reader around Emmett, because he usually just said whatever was in his head, at the very moment he thought it.

"That's between me and the Daddy, don't you think?"

"It's just better to have thought about it before hand, Bella. You don't know what he's coming here to say to you, if his mind is already made up. I'm just saying."

"I know." I sighed into Rosalie's shoulder. "I know."

I went to bed early, almost immediately after coming home from the doctor. Doing almost nothing can truly be exhausting. I allowed my bed to swallow me completely. As soon as I had received my first wage from my first honest to goodness grown up job I went straight out and bought the most decadent mattress, topper, duvet and pillows I could afford. There is nothing better than sinking deep into bed and feeling like it is giving you a hug hello. It's probably because I've been single for so long, that I craved that goodnight hug from something, anything, even if it was a topper and duvet.

My dreams were blank. I don't mean I didn't dream. I did. They were just blank. I could hear something working, some kind of machinery that wasn't quite able to maintain momentum, but I could see nothing. I couldn't see my hand as I waved it in front of my dream face.

Rosalie screaming at me didn't wake me the next morning and for that I was thankful. I stretched out like a cat, groaning at the movements and the release they offered my tense limbs.

Today was the day Edward was coming round. We were going to talk about our baby. I was struggling with it, to be honest. I really tried to not think about it. I've never been able to tackle problems head on. In actuality, I wasn't sure Baby was actually a problem in the strictest sense of the word. Sure, he or she had come along at a not ideal time but when exactly was ideal? Being perpetually single doesn't exactly lead to marriage and family.

Sometimes life throws things at you, but never more than you can handle. I was strong enough for this, of that I was certain. The thought of abortion had entered my mind, it would have been remiss of me to not at least think the word. I wasn't opposed to the idea, I didn't judge those people who did it.

But it wasn't for me.

Once again I stumbled down to the kitchen by guiding myself with a hand against the wall. It was just so hard to keep upright. I felt like I actually had the weight of the world resting on my shoulders. After telling Emmett yesterday I felt a little lighter, maybe once everyone knew about Baby I would feel a release and be able to hold my head up without needing to nap straight after.

Rosalie and Emmett had stayed after I had gone to sleep and done some housework for me. That was unexpected and unexpected niceness had been making me tear up the past week. Tears pricked my eyes but I swiped them away and slumped down into the nearest chair. The wood felt cool under my cheek as I rested my head down onto it. The little wood grain heart was there, my fingers traced along the slightly bumpy outline until I resolved to fix myself some breakfast.

I padded over to the fridge to find a note held in place by my Seahawks magnet.

_Pastries are in the oven. _

_Turn it on. _

_Leave it for 20 minutes. _

_Consume._

_We love you, R+E_

I was going to have to get used to being looked after it seemed. The tears would definitely have to stop.

After eating something like a croissant with chocolate in the middle that left my face covered in the sticky sauce, I felt a little better. I allowed myself to remember that Edward was coming over in a couple of hours and I felt the butterflies in my stomach. The little fluttering buggers that served to remind me that he had made me feel like I was going to see stars for months after he touched me. That was just his kiss, just his lips that made me feel like that. I was in distinct danger of swooning yet again.

Making myself presentable was easier than I expected, luckily my notoriously sketchy balance held up and I made it out of the shower in one piece. Dragging a comb through my thick brown hair I looked in the mirror. Scrunching up my face I turned to the side and dropped my towel. My body looked no different. My breasts remained handful sized, my stomach remained flat. I searched my eyes for a sign of difference. I was sure there should be some outward sign already but there was nothing. Except for the slight dark circles around my eyes, but they could be hidden by the makeup Rosalie insisted I buy in the gold tube that clicked on the bottom.

Yanking on a pair of jeans, I considered my clothing options. This was a serious talk to be had. But, there was part of me that just wanted Edward to really, _really_ fancy me, as unlikely as that seemed. I'm pretty sure that night had been a pity fuck, or a really-drunk-no-other-options-fuck. My pride was at stake here.

Settling on a t-shirt with Iron Man printed on the front I made my way back down the stairs feeling a little sprightlier. I had abandoned the making Edward fancy me plan because, let's face it, he's a god and I'm a mortal.

At a little past ten there was a knock on my front door. With trepidation I opened the door and tried to smile. My heart skipped a beat when I looked up at his face. My mind went blank and I uttered the first thing that came into my head.

"I forgot you looked like a lion." He shook his head in confusion and laughed softly.

"What?"

"You, with your hair and your...you-ness." His soft smile grew into a smirk that lifted higher on the left side of his face. His hand reached up and softly brushed some hair away from my eyes, making my breathing stutter slightly.

"May I come in? You and I have to talk about our cub."

**A/N: Anybody still with me?**

**If so, hello *waves* leave me review if you're that way inclined :D  
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	3. When Edward Tells Alice

**Chapter 3 – Edward**

**When Edward tells Alice**

Work had been difficult lately. I had been making really simple mistakes, nothing dangerous, but mistakes I should not be making. I just couldn't stop thinking about her, about Bella. Since that night she had been in my mind, slowly niggling all the way through into my everyday life. Her gorgeous thick brown hair that I wrapped around my hands to anchor her to me as we had indulged in what was the most fantastic sex I'd ever experienced. I didn't even want to call it sex, but I couldn't bring myself to call it anything overly schmaltzy.

I had written my number down for her as she left, the post orgasmic haze still blanketing my body. If I had been in full control of myself I would have insisted I drive her home, insisted that she give me her number, but I stupidly didn't and she hadn't called.

I knew she was an accountant and she knew I was a doctor. I knew that she moaned when I licked the soft spot behind her ear and that she loved it when I talked dirty whispers into her ear. All month I had been beating myself up about letting her slip away so easily.

For the past month any woman with brown hair caught my eye, but none of them compared to her when I looked at them properly.

I was a fucking moron for letting her leave.

They announced a phone call for me, breaking me out of my brooding _woe is me_ moment. Lifting the receiver at the nurse's station I spoke, expecting to hear an unfamiliar voice ask about a patient.

"Hi, Edward? It's Bella. Bella Swan." She sounded hesitant, a little nervous but I was so happy she had called. I thought it was sweet that she felt the need to quantify who she was by repeating her name in full. Like I could ever forget those eyes staring up at me as I pushed into her. Suppressing a groan I replied.

"Right, hi." I tried to stop the smile spreading across my face, the nurse looked at me curiously so I turned my back and walked as far away as the cord would let me.

"So, I'm sorry I'm calling you at work but I lost your other number and I remembered where you said you worked, so..."

"I'm really glad you called, Bella." I really, truly was. She made a soft noise before talking again.

"Right. We need to talk. I, God, there's no easy way to say it. Well, Edward, I'm pregnant." She said it all in one breath as all of mine was knocked out of me.

I was silent as I processed the information. She wouldn't be telling me this unless she was sure it was mine, of that I was certain. My arm leaned against the wall and my head thumped down onto my forearm.

"But we used protection. I put the..." I lowered my voice when a colleague walked past, he was eyeing me curiously too. I must have been pale as a ghost. I felt certain that somehow all of the blood contained within me had found a way to leave. "... condom on myself."

"I know, I saw you do it." I had to shake my head to get the image of her lying on the bed, leaning back on her elbows eyeing me slide the latex on, biting her lip in anticipation. "I don't know what to say, apparently they only work 99% of the time. Did you know they put that on the side of the box?"

"I know." I sighed. "I just never thought I would be the 1%."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, I can't really talk about this right now, because of work, but give me your number and I'll call you when I finish."

I rushed over to grab a pen and scrap of paper to scribble down her number, reassuring her that I would call as soon as my shift was over. She probably thought I was never going to speak to her again. Of course she would, she doesn't even know me, for all she knows I could be one of those callous shits who would go straight to the HR department and sweet talk my way out of Seattle and straight on a flight to Florida.

For all _I_ knew she could be calling to get me to pay for the abortion. The thought made me feel a little sick. I would do everything I could to talk her out of that if she wanted to do it. I'd support her, I knew I would because I could never impose my will upon someone, but I couldn't even dwell any longer on the thought of her doing that.

The rest of my shift passed in a blur. I managed to avoid killing anyone inadvertently then went to find out if I could take a couple of personal days.

Scrubbing cold water over my three day beard scruff in the restroom I appraised my reflection. Did I look like a father? Could I even be a father? I knew the literal sense of the word would be no problem, but what kind of man would I be when interacting and teaching my child?

Shaking my head clear, I dried off my face and left the hospital. Driving through Seattle is often challenging because of the rain that seemed perpetually present, but tonight was different. The sky was clear, we were coming to the end of summer and I was surprised to admit that I missed the rain when it wasn't there.

I parked and knocked on the door in front of me. Usually I walk straight in, but tonight I felt different, felt more respectful of privacy for some reason. Besides, last week I had walked straight in and found my sister bent in the most disgusting of ways with her husband's naked ass bobbing up and down at me in greeting. I won't ever be sitting on that seat again.

"Edward!" Alice crinkled her nose at me and smiled, before it faltered slightly when she instinctively sensed something was up. "You know you can just come in right?"

"I'm still getting over last week Al', maybe one day." I tried to grin but couldn't quite manage it. Her tiny hand grasped mine with a surprising firmness and pulled me inside to envelope me in her arms, her warmth, her reassurance, her strength.

"Tell me."

"Can I come in properly first?"

"Oh, sorry, of course." She smiled apologetically, stepping to the side and closing the door behind me.

Jasper was sitting watching a Seahawks game from the previous season on the massive television they had bolted to the wall of their living room.

"Why are you watching this again?" I asked, taking a seat beside him and snagging his beer for a quick swig.

"Just getting ready, reminding myself why I love 'em." His Southern twang has lessened over the years but it was still there, he wouldn't allow himself to lose it.

"Good plan."

"Yep. That McCarty's a beast, glad he's on our side."

"Damn straight." I stole his beer again to take another gulp before Alice returned with one of my own.

We sat like that for twenty minutes, Jasper staring at the screen with blank eyes because he was actually focused on me, Alice not even pretending to focus on anything else and me with my nose pinched between a thumb and forefinger, the other hand raking through my hair in no discernible pattern.

I couldn't figure out how to bring up what was going on. I felt like my neurons had stopped firing. All I could see in my head was Bella, her face, her lips, her hair and her belly, swelling through the seasons, with our hands pressed against it to feel the kicks emanating from within.

I was terrified and excited.

I was close to throwing up with the conflicting emotions.

I had to reel myself in, I didn't know what Bella wanted. I didn't know if she would even let me be in her life after this, and I _so_ wanted to be. If it turned out to be a false alarm I still wanted to be in her life. She made me feel again, after years of being so narrow minded about a career in medicine, so unwilling to be distracted by anything, I had shut down.

She was an enticing thought of a future I suddenly wanted.

"Spill it Edward, I can't take any more of the confusing emotions spilling out of you. You're happy, you're sad, you're excited, you're scared. Just fuckin' tell us already." Jasper snapped and I felt guilty which made him groan at me.

He had always been far too empathetic for his own good. He could pick up every emotion in a room at the same time, which is why he had always been such a loner throughout college until I had introduced him to my sister.

"I'm sorry Jas'. Or, should I say, Uncle Jasper?" It wasn't subtle and it certainly wasn't clever but it seemed the easiest way to tell them. "Aunt Alice?"

Alice squealed, as I expected, then she stopped in confusion.

"Wait, what? You aren't dating anyone. You _don't_ date. What the hell Edward?"

"I met her at a club last month, it was a work thing." I shrugged.

"She works with you?"

"No, she's an accountant, she was out with friends who were pretty much ignoring her because they were practically fucking against a wall, so I bought her a drink and, well, guess the rest Al', I'm not going to give you details and draw a diagram."

"You should maybe have drawn a diaphragm." Jasper chuckled at his own joke, I rolled my eyes and threw the nearest cushion to hand at him.

Alice moved seats, she sat beside me and gave me a hug, pulling my hand out of my hair she clasped it in her own.

"So, is she nice?"

"She's...she's...lovely." I sighed like a big fucking girl and Jasper smiled slyly, knowing he wouldn't let me forget it.

"And she's having your baby?"

"Apparently. I need to speak to her properly." I looked at my watch, it had been three hours since I spoke to her. "Shit, I need to call her soon."

"Oh, Edward." Alice sighed at my situation before a massive smile spread right across her face, reaching all the way up to her eyes. "Congratulations."

I dialled the number Bella had given me. It rang five times, and just as I was about to hang up she answered.

"Hello?" She sounded groggy, like I had woken her.

"Did I wake you?" I asked softly, anxious to not jolt her with a loud noise if she had just woken up.

"No, I'm good, I'm just so tired."

"You sound exhausted. I'm sorry to call so late, but I had work."

"I know, I understand. We should meet up, can you come over?"

"Now?" I was already standing up to grab my keys when she replied through a yawn.

"No, not now." She laughed softly when her yawn ended. "Sorry about that. Can you come over Thursday?"

"Two days?"

"A day and a bit. I'm sorry, I know I threw this at you and I know we have to talk but I can't see you tomorrow."

"Bella, please don't apologise, Thursday will be good for me. Give me your address. Is ten good for you?" She recited her address and I was surprised to note it was in a pretty upscale neighbourhood close to my parents.

"Thank you, Edward. For, well, for phoning me back...and not shouting, I was worried there would be shouting."

"Thank you for tracking me down, I'll see you soon. Sleep tight."

"Don't let the bed bugs bite." She giggled adorably, though her voice had gone gritty again.

"Take care." I smiled, and I realised that I didn't want to hang up, I wanted to be on the other end all night as she slept, just in case she needed me.

"You too." Another yawn came through the receiver but before I could reply with any excuse to keep talking to her she hung up softly, leaving the brrrrrr of the dead line in my ear.

I went to the gym before I went to see Bella. Mainly because I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept since Bella had called me to tell me the news. It was all I could think about. I stayed with Alice and Jasper that night, lying awake in their spare room staring at the ceiling. Jasper had all but thrown me out the next day, citing being unable to handle my emotions as the reason with an apologetic smile.

My feet pounded down into the treadmill, I ran as if I was being chased but obviously I got no further forward. I worked out with the weights until it was finally time to leave. A quick shower later and I was in the car, driving towards one of the most important conversations I would ever have.

Her house was nice, hell, it was more than nice. It was downright grand. It wasn't on the scale of my childhood home but it was bigger than where I was living right now. The front door was a bright bold red, I knocked using the brass lion centred on the door and my knees almost buckled when I saw her for the first time since that night.

She was still beautiful, but her soulful brown eyes were slightly bloodshot, light purple rimmed the underside of them, though some of her hair had fallen forward hiding them slightly. I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from her. Best of all, she was wearing an obviously loved Iron Man t-shirt, the print had a faded, well washed look and it was another piece fitting into the Bella attraction puzzle.

"I forgot you looked like a lion." She blurted out, looking mortified. I'd been told many things about my appearance before but never that I looked like a lion. Shaking my head in confusion I managed to reply.

"What?"

"You, with your hair, and your...you-ness." I couldn't help the smirk that was tugging at my lips. She really was just adorable. My hand stretched out towards her of its own volition to stroke some hair away from her face so that I could see her better, her breathing stuttered and it gave me a small amount of hope that she was maybe feeling the same way about me. That she acknowledged that the attraction from that night was definitely still there, I felt it travel up my fingers, along my arm and straight into my chest.

"May I come in? You and I have to talk about our cub."

With a start she shook her head almost imperceptibly before moving to the side to let me in. The door closed with a slam and I waited for her to show me where to go. The walls in her hall were a rich cream, it was welcoming and light. Photographs hung in frames on the walls, none in alignment with another. She padded past me and I followed, my eyes taking in the quick glimpses of her life prior to this moment. There were a lot of photographs of her with a beautiful blonde woman, and even more with her and a massive guy who looked slightly familiar. Occasionally there was a picture with people who must have been her family and there was more than one, I was unhappy to note, of a group of guys wearing nothing but cut off shorts with their arms all wrapped around Bella.

"Coffee?"

"Yes, thank you. I need the caffeine, I can't sleep."

"I've done nothing but sleep the past few days." She kept her eyes averted, for some reason unwilling to look at me. I couldn't blame her, she probably thought I was the anti-Christ after managing to impregnate her through latex.

"You know you shouldn't be having caffeine though, right?" The doctor in me made an appearance, not at the best time I admit.

"Uh, yeah, I wasn't going to. I'm having lemon water. Besides, I'm allowed about 200mg a day, but I'm not a caffeine junkie anyway. "

"Right, sorry."

This was far more awkward than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a massive level of awkwardness. In the silence that lingered while Bella made my coffee I took in her kitchen. The main space of the floor was occupied by a massive drift wood table with various books lying open over one half of it. Her walls were a bright green that blended well with the natural looking wood of the units. More pictures were hanging on the walls in here and I filled the time by looking at them.

Similarly, they were filled with people of her own age, the group of topless touching guys featured heavily along with the blonde and the massive guy. There were a few of an elderly couple with, who I assumed was, Bella when she was younger.

"That's my Dad's Mum and Dad." She told me, I would have jumped except for the fact that I had felt her move close to me before she spoke. Handing me the coffee I let it warm my hands before taking a sip. "That was a few months before they died."

"They died together?" What the fuck is wrong with me? What kind of question is that? Without batting an eye she answered me quietly.

"No, she died first, massive stroke. He died a couple of weeks after from a broken heart. They met when they were fourteen and had never been apart longer than a night since they were married at eighteen."

"Wow." Was all I could come up with.

"Yeah." She smiled up at me before running a finger across their faces. "Please, sit." Her hand gestured to the table and I did what I was bid.

We sat opposite each other, both contemplative, her fingers were rubbing across a mark on the table that I couldn't quite make out. There were so many questions to be answered but neither of us knew where to start.

"How have you been?" I started with a fairly innocuous question.

"Good, tired, freaked out, scared." She smiled, shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I've never...I mean...this isn't something I have experience in dealing with."

"Me neither." I smiled across at her. "I mean, at work, obviously, but never in my own life."

"I went to the doctor yesterday." She took a sip of her lemon water before continuing. "He confirmed it, not that I needed it confirmed after the amount of at home tests I did. Eleven can't all be wrong, right?"

"No, eleven can't all be wrong."

"So, he talked through my options. I didn't know they did that right then. Like, _here's_ _some news you may not be elated about, let's talk about abortion_." She finished the sentence sarcastically but looked at me, searching my face for some sort of reaction.

"Right, yeah, well, the sooner the better if that's your decision."

"It isn't." It felt like a massive weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I let out a colossal breath and smiled at Bella.

"It isn't?"

"No. I know this is massive, and I don't expect anything from you Edward, but you have a right to know about my decision."

"I'm confused. You don't want me around?" I wasn't sure where she was going with this. I was just elated that she wasn't going to have an abortion.

"No. Yes. Wait." She frowned a little and stared at the table. "No in answer to your question, which means yes, I want you around." I stared at her, pausing to let her continue if she wanted. Her eyes lifted from the table and locked onto mine, my heart started to beat erratically. "If you want to be around, that is."

"Bella, I want to be around. Even if there wasn't a baby, I'd want to be around. I was so happy when you called. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since that night." Her cheeks flushed an alluring pink as I moved from my chair and approached her. Dropping to my knees by her side I took her hand and kissed her knuckles before moving our hands onto her flat stomach.

"That's, well, that was unexpected." She giggled. "I didn't know what to expect, but I don't think I was expecting that."

"This is massively backwards, but I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me? On a date?" I clarified, leaving no room for error. If it took me a while to make her know that I wasn't here purely for the baby then it'd worth every second.

"OK." She whispered, trying to hide the smile tugging at the side of her mouth and failing.

"Good." I stood up, brushing the back of my hand against her cheek, she leaned into it with a small sigh and I couldn't help my next action. My hands cupped her face and I kissed her gently as the heat from her blushing face warmed me.

I retreated to the other side of the table, mainly to enable myself to stop touching her. Whenever I was within a foot of her my hands wanted to be on her, even if it was merely our fingertips touching. It had been like that in the club on the night we met, she stumbled on the steps and as soon as I stopped her from landing on her face my hands didn't want to let go.

"Who have you told?" I asked her once I was safely back in my seat with my hands wrapped around the warm cup.

"My best friend, Rosalie, she was the first person I called when I had an inkling. She's the one who bought me all the tests." She laughed and I joined in. "Her boyfriend too, who is also my best friend, I've known him since I was seven."

"Is she the blonde in the photographs?"

"Yeah, and man mountain in the photographs is Emmett." She smiled again. Over the course of the last forty minutes I had learned that Bella had many smiles and I was going to make it my mission to see all of them.

"He looks familiar, but I'm sure I've never met him, I'd remember meeting someone that massive."

"Oh, yeah, he does sports."

"Does sports?"

"He plays for the Seahawks." She finally admitted to my gobsmacked face.

"Emmett McCarty is your best childhood friend?"

"The one and only."

"That's so cool." She looked over at me in amusement, that's another smile I've met. "I've got to warn you, there's a distinct chance that I'll go all fanboy on his ass if we meet." That elicited a massive laugh from her.

"I've got to warn you, there's a distinct chance he'll want to _kick_ your ass when you meet him."

"Oh god."

"Yup, that's the price you pay for getting the best friend of an NFL MVP knocked up."

"Shit. I think I should hit the gym"

We snickered at each other for a second before the reality of that settled around us.

"Who have you told?" She asked, trying to alleviate the suddenly thoughtful and sombre atmosphere.

"My sister, and her husband, who happens to be my best friend. I was there when I called you the other night."

"What about your parents?"

"I was thinking that I should talk to you prior to that conversation. What about _your_ parents?"

"Well, um, my Mom isn't in my life anymore and telling Charlie...well...that's a pretty terrifying prospect. I was going to wait until I had passed three months before breaking his heart." Yet another smile made its debut, this one pensive and sad.

"Break his heart?"

"He, well, he wouldn't be heartbroken. That I exaggerated, but he always wanted me to be settled down before I started a family."

"I understand, I think every parent wants that for their child. We'll be like that with Simba."

"Simba?" She smirked.

"Yeah, our cub." I smirked back at her, watching her cheeks grow pink.

"It could be a Nala, you know."

"Whatever it is, I'll be happy." We locked eyes again.

"Me too." She whispered.

**A/N: Hello *waves***

**I hope that you are enjoying this still...you could leave a review and let me know :D**

**I'll probably send teasers out as replies :D  
**


	4. When Edward Meets Emmett

**Chapter 4 – Bella**

**When Edward meets Emmett**

Edward and I talked for the rest of the morning in my kitchen, the strips of sunlight moved slowly across the floor as we got to know each other that little bit better. At times I couldn't help but stare across the table at him. He was, quite simply, the most handsome man I had ever met, and the fact that I had known him in the biblical sense wouldn't leave my head. I knew that underneath his lightweight t-shirt he was packing abs of steal, and the well defined muscles that pointed the way to happy town tensed under the lightest of touches.

I couldn't help but notice the matching purple shadows under his eyes and the way he tried to stifle yawns as we talked. He looked like he needed a nap. I knew I definitely felt like having one myself. It would slightly odd of me to suggest that we nap, right? I'm not sure I cared, to be honest.

"...ideally I want to open up my own practice as soon as possible. Obviously that would make it easier for me to see Simba." He continued, nodding his head towards my stomach with a tiny smile. I liked that we already had a nickname for the baby, that it was an inside joke.

"That sounds..." I couldn't help the massive yawn that escaped my mouth. "...good." I finally managed to finish my sentence.

"God, I'm sorry, you said you were tired and I just keep going on and on. I should go."

"No!" I blurted emphatically, shaking my head at him. Now that he was here I was seriously reluctant for him to leave. While it was true that I had been constantly tired, for some reason after our conversation earlier and knowing that we were both on the same page of this particular book I was already beginning to feel better.

"No?"

"Please, don't think that you have to leave. I was thinking we could, uh, go through to the couch? A comfier seat?" I didn't mention my wicked plan to lull him into a sense of comfort and security so that I could literally sleep with him.

"Sure."

I led the way through to my living room, turning occasionally to see his eyes glued to the photographs that I had dotted about the walls and on top of cabinets. He seemed interested in my life prior to our meeting. It had been hilarious to watch the comprehension dawn on him that Emmett was one of my best friends and that he would want to kick his ass. It was true, and something that Edward needed to be warned about.

That conversation had come after Edward had kissed me ever so softly. I swear he actually just killed all of the tiny butterflies that had been fluttering about in my stomach. I almost couldn't breathe after his lips had sparked against mine. If there had been kindling lying about there would have been a kitchen fire.

My tongue glanced out and licked my lips quickly, hoping that a trace of Edward still remained, before I turned again and motioned to the couch with a smile.

"Thanks." He smiled. I love his smile. No, I like his smile. I _love _his sexy teasing smirk that lifts a little higher on the left.

"No problem." I watched him sink into the cushions with a groan.

"Oh my God. This is amazing, so comfortable and soft."

"This is nothing." I laughed, taking a seat beside him. "You should feel my bed."

"Excuse me?" We both let out shocked laughs. His face remained a normal colour, however, when I could feel mine burning brighter than the sun. I couldn't even look at him, shaking my hair around my face to hide my burning cheeks I looked at the blank television screen above the fire place.

"I mean, um, just that it's soft and welcoming. Y'know, comfy?" I heard the fabric of the couch shift as he moved closer to me. Long, musician looking fingers tucked hair behind my ear before they pressed their coolness against the heat of my face.

"Bella, please don't hide. I kind of like it when your face goes that pretty pink colour."

"I'm just so embarrassing." I groaned. "It's like I've never interacted with people before, you make me nervous. Like, a good nervous."

"You make me nervous too." He admitted, gently turning my head towards him, the honesty shining out from him made it impossible for me to scoff like I normally would have. My face was cupped in his beautiful, and incredibly talented, hands and my breathing stuttered again. Without any cognitive thought, my body leaned forward to bring my lips against his, softly scuffing against the sensitive skin and feeling that indescribable spark of energy pass between us again.

Neither of us pulled away, just millimetres separated our mouths, when we smiled against each other they made contact and brought forth another spark.

"I've never kissed and made sparks before." I muttered, breathing heavily and pulling away slightly.

"I'd quite like you to see stars as well as feel that spark." He replied, bringing his lips against mine all too briefly before pulling us down onto the couch and tucking me under his arm. "As much as I would enjoy taking this further I think that maybe we should have a nap."

"It's like you can read my mind." I sighed, curling into his side and resting my head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat, which I noticed was as erratic as mine.

My dream was still blank. There were only noises. The rev of the machinery was gaining momentum, the engine still not catching quite right. I knew I was waving my hand in front of my face again but still I could not see it. This time, however, I became aware of someone else in the room along with me. I somehow knew that they were searching for me. I could stay where I was or I could take my chance and walk with my hand outstretched in the hope of finding the person. Before I could make my decision I felt a finger stroke across my cheek and I jumped both in the dream and in reality.

The shock of the jump woke me up and I found Edward hovering above me wide eyed with his finger still on my cheek.

"Shit. I'm so sorry." He searched my face for any sign of distress. His patent concern softened my face and I smiled gently.

"It's ok. I was dreaming I was in a black room and someone was looking for me, it just shocked me when you touched me because I felt it in the dream."

"Sorry." His finger finished its sojourn across my cheek before being replaced by his lips. "Is this ok?"

"Mmmm." I became aware of the fact that we had shifted in our sleep. I was lying flat on my back along the length of the couch and Edward was crushed up against the back. His lips continued to flutter across my face, my fingers scrunched up into his soft hair.

This was going to be an interesting courtship. Usually I was pretty firm on the rules of touching when it came to dating. But no one had ever made me feel this way with simple kisses. We had slept together in the non literal sense on the night we met. I was pregnant with Simba, his child. I smiled at that.

I had spent P-Day crying with Rosalie over what had happened, but now it felt like there was nothing to cry about. I knew I wasn't going into this alone. I had a support network of people who not only loved me, but would love Simba with every fibre of their being. Then there was Edward, he had made it clear that he was going to be there for our child.

He had also made it clear that he was going to be there for me too.

That was the only vague worry I had. What if it doesn't work out? What if he ends up not wanting me? What if it ends horribly? Those were the doubts I was feeling, and I was happy that the doubts weren't about having our baby.

Not that I thought a few wouldn't creep in at some point. Mainly about my abilities to be an actual mother, but I refused to spend the next eight months full of panic and worry.

Edward was reluctant to put any of his weight on me, but I was really craving it. Guiding him down to me with one hand in his hair and the other on his waist I turned my mouth towards his, capturing his bottom lip and making him freeze.

"I don't know if I should." He freed his lip to tell me.

"I don't know either." I admitted, feeling the loss of his reassuring kisses already. "I'll go on top." His eyebrows shot into his hair line and I giggled. "Nothing untoward, I promise."

"Shame." He groaned with his delicious smirk plastered across his face and his eyes sparkling at me. Secretly pleased but rolling my eyes outwardly I tried to manoeuvre myself around so that he could slide underneath me.

I don't know how long we had been sleeping, but my lack of stretching out after had made my muscles grumpy. Cramp pierced through my calf and I yelped with the pain. I've never seen a man move so fast. Edward was off the couch and gripping my leg in seconds, instantly understanding my pain. Trying to stretch out my calf he pulled my leg up and put some pressure on my toes.

"Oh god. No. Ow, ow, ow, ow. Jesus Edward!" I wasn't thinking about what was coming out of my mouth, the stretching finally alleviating the cramp.

A blur of motion occurred above me, my leg thumped back down onto the couch unceremoniously and I looked up to see Emmett grabbing at Edward's shoulders, hauling him backwards and pinning him to the wall by his neck with his forearm.

"Get your fucking hands off her. She said no, didn't you hear her?" Edward looked panicked, his eyes darting to me and back to Emmett. I hadn't even heard him come in.

"Emmett McCarty!" Emmett glanced over at me quickly, before he lessened the pressure slightly on Edward's throat at my tone. "You get _your_ fucking hands off _him_!" I hauled myself up from the couch, anxious not to cause my leg to cramp up again. Storming over to them I stood on my tiptoes, grabbed the back of Emmett's shirt and yanked him back.

"Bella...he was..."

"He was helping me with my cramping calf, Emmett. He's a _doctor_, he knows what he is doing."

"But you didn't see it from my angle, and I heard you say no..."

"Jesus Emmett." I scowled at him before pushing past and walking to Edward. His hand was massaging his neck, his ego severely bruised and his breathing heavy. I pushed my hands into his hair briefly before stroking my hand along his neck to move his hand away so that I could have a look. There was a red mark but it didn't look like it was going to turn into a bruise.

"I'm ok." He told me.

"You are lucky that he is ok!" I rounded on Emmett who, to his credit, was looking more sheepish than a herd of sheep. Rubbing the back of his neck and trying to pull the big-eyed-pouting look that usually got him out of trouble. "What do you think this kind of thing does to a pregnant woman's stress levels, McCarty?"

"I'm sorry."

"What the hell are you doing here anyway? I told you not to come round here today." My annoyance was finally ebbing away.

"It's after five, and I was worried."

Rolling my eyes at him I turned back to Edward who still had a massive frown on his face and was staring at the floor. Ducking under I caught his eye with a smile and a quirk of my eyebrow. A quick nod let me know he was fine, I took his hand and brought him over to Emmett.

"I'm a grown woman, I can take care of myself. Emmett, this is Edward. Edward, this is Emmett." Despite the fact that Emmett had just pinned him to a wall by his neck I could still see the formation of fanboy excitement in Edward. Emmett stuck out his hand for a shake, there was a slight pause before it was accepted.

"I'm really sorry man, I'm just protective."

"It's fine, really, I'm glad she has someone like you around, to be honest. Though, please don't pin me to a wall again."

"Not unless you deserve it." They both laughed, Edward slightly nervously.

"This, right here, way harder than meeting my Dad, Edward." With a smile, he took my hand again before answering.

"Baptism of fire, huh?"

"You haven't met Rosalie yet." Guffawed Emmett.

The talk with Edward definitely helped. I wasn't exactly leaping about like a ballerina when I got out of bed the next morning but I was never exactly known to do that anyway. There was a distinct spring in my step, whether this was due to knowing my baby...Simba...was not going to grow up fatherless or down to the Edward kisses I couldn't tell. It was most likely a combination of the two.

Throwing on some work clothes I grabbed breakfast before I left. I wasn't looking forward to the clothes shopping I was going to have to do to accommodate my growing belly. Hopefully I would be able to throw my credit card at Rosalie and she would work her fashion magic for me. It was the way we had worked in the past and I was optimistic she would agree to it again.

Work was going to be interesting. I had to keep this to myself. I didn't want to cry wolf and if, god forbid, something happened prior to my 3 month scan I didn't want the constant questions and concern. This was going to be between 6 people until then.

It was going to be hard to keep if from Angela and Ben, however. They are my work wife and husband, as well as being real life husband and wife to each other. I find it practically impossible to keep anything from Angela, all she needs to do is look at me to know that something major is going on.

Angela wasn't in her office when I walked by on my way to my own. What greeted me was a pile of folders all relating to a different subsidy of the conglomerate that I worked for. I knew that every single one of the unassuming folders meant around twenty hours of work, and I was dying to dive into them.

I wandered through the almost empty department while I waited for my computer to boot up. Our floor was pretty non-descript with regards to the decoration. The occasional plant dotted the floor and the standard inspirational yet bland pictures adorned the walls. Thankfully it wasn't divided by those stupid cubicles, nothing says just give up and kill yourself more than being herded into tiny cubicles. I was lucky, I had my own office which allowed me some privacy and I had worked damn hard to get it.

I left my office door open before logging into the system and rifling through the folders, sorting them into a priority order. I made folders for them on the computer and got a geeky spike of excitement when I thought about all the Excel work I was going to have to do. How I ended up bagging Edward, if that's what I have managed to do, I have no idea. He obviously has no idea about how much of a geek I am when it comes to stuff like this. Whenever I need a moment alone I go to the stationery cupboard to wonder at all the items. I roll my eyes at myself frequently.

Angela and Ben strolled through the department hand in hand just before nine. I had been in since eight, knowing I would have some catching up to do. Looking at them you could not imagine them with anyone else. Angela stood a good five inches taller than Ben. They both had brown eyes and brown hair, they always more the matching smiles of people in love at all times. It would sicken me if it weren't so damn sweet.

As usual, they stopped at his desk and parted with a chaste kiss on the cheek before Angela floated on air through my office door. With a grin she sat herself down in the chair on the other side of my desk.

"Morning."

"Good morning to you, Bella. You look...nice...have you done something different with your hair?" It took her less than a minute to recognise a change. This woman scares me on several levels.

"Um, no, nothing different." I shook my ponytail to emphasise the point.

"Did you meet someone?"

"Are you a witch?"

"Why are you answering my question with a question?"

"Does it bother you?" We stared at each other for a beat before dissolving into giggles.

"Spill it, Swan. I don't want details, just give me a synopsis."

"Edward, Doctor, seriously hot." There was nothing wrong with spilling just a few of the details.

"I like your style." She grins at me, obviously pleased with the information I choose to part with and more than pleased that I have finally found something other than my work to keep me occupied. "Seriously hot, huh?"

"Yeah, like on the scale of Matt Followill to Caleb Followill he is Jared."

"Wow. Off the scale. And a Doctor? Don't blow it." She teased, blowing a raspberry at me before leaving me grinning like the Cheshire cat in her wake.

"Don't you worry, I have a feeling he's going to be in my life for a very long time!" I yelled after her.

My day passed in a blur of Excel sheets and yanking on my ponytail in frustration. Sometimes relevant costing just isn't easy. Rosalie called twice and Emmett called me once. The concern and love was appreciated but interrupted the flow of my thinking.

It was past seven when I finally gathered my things and threw them in my bag, bundling my folders under my arm to work on at home I made my way out of the office. Half way down to my car my phone started ringing, glancing at the display I couldn't help the smile that formed on my face. I did a little hop in the elevator, lucky I didn't turn my ankle in the ridiculous heels Rosalie had convinced me I needed to wear as part of my every day work wardrobe. The hop made the tiny little metal room bounce which in turn made me seriously terrified. I almost forgot the reason I had done a little hop in the first place.

"Hello?" I answered breathlessly from the terror.

"Bella? Are you alright?" He sounded concerned and I swooned again. I need to stop the swooning, it's getting a bit Scarlett O'Hara.

"Yeah, the elevator just bounced and scared me."

"You're just leaving work?"

"Busy day, take a few days off and you have to make back the time."

I tucked the phone between my cheek and shoulder to push my way through the door to the parking garage. Nodding to the guard on my way past I finally made it into my car.

"Could you hold on a second?" I waited for his agreement before I fiddled with some buttons and hooked my phone up to the built in telephony system. "Sorry about that. How are you?"

"I'm good, I keep thinking about, well, about you." His voice petered off at the end with what I assumed was embarrassment.

"Really?" Something built in my chest, making the strangest noise come out of my throat. "Sorry, I have no idea what that was." I laughed, pressing my head onto my steering wheel as it dawned on me that the noise may just be the actual sound of happiness.

"Yes, really." He joined in with my laughter. We seemed to laugh with each other a lot, and smile at each other. I liked how easy it was already, but part of me was waiting for the bubble to burst. "What are you doing with the rest of your evening?"

"Um, I have some stuff I want to do for work, and I guess find something to eat." I started the car and drove out of the parking garage. "I don't think I've eaten anything since breakfast." I admitted.

"You haven't eaten? Promise me that you'll eat something as soon as you get in."

"Sure I will." Envisioning myself tucking into something quick as I easily agreed to this promise.

We spoke the entire drive home, which to be fair wasn't long but still made me gooey inside. I hoped the random phone calls would continue. We said goodbye after talking some more as I sat outside my house.

The fatigue set in the moment I crossed the threshold. I went straight to the kitchen to make good on the promise I made to Edward. My fingers brushed against a massive bag of cheese puffs when I rooted through the cupboards so I settled for that. The bag was open before I left the kitchen and I shoved a fistful into my mouth, savouring the synthetic cheese taste. I would normally have gone to the gym after work with Rosalie then opened a bottle of wine. I guess wine was off the menu for the next eight months, to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms I snatched a bunch of grapes on my way to where I set my laptop up in the living room.

It was twenty minutes later, when I was tapping the keys on my laptop with orange stained fingers and alternating cheese puffs with grapes that there was a knock on my front door. Frowning, I glanced at the time and went to the door. I knew it wasn't Rosalie or Emmett, they had keys.

"Hello?" I called through the closed door.

"Hi, it's Edward." My knees wobbled at his voice.

"Hi." I beamed at him when I yanked the door open. He looked exhausted but his smile was genuine. He shook the brown bag in his hand at me.

"I brought you dinner."

Swoon.

"You didn't have to do that." I let him in, he went straight to the kitchen and I ran straight to the downstairs restroom to scrub the orange stains from my fingers.

"I got a feeling that you wouldn't get yourself something healthy." He called, his voice moving from the kitchen to the living room and back again. When I finally got my fingers back to reasonable colour I joined him in the kitchen.

"I had grapes." I pouted.

"And cheese puffs." He looked pointedly at the half empty bag he had thrown in the trash.

"I'm sure it's a food group."

"Trust me, I'm a Doctor, it's really not."

He had somehow found where I kept my plates and cutlery. Broccoli, steak, potatoes and carrots were already on the plates in the living room by the time I got to the kitchen.

"You like pineapple juice?" I nodded yes and followed him when he walked through to the food.

Edward and I sat side by side on the couch. He had moved my laptop to the floor to accommodate the plates. We ate in almost complete silence. Our knees nudged against each other in between sounds of appreciation of the food, we kept stealing glances at each other with sly smiles and heavy on the eye contact. It was the best meal of my life and I was glad I was sitting down because otherwise I would definitely have swooned in front of him.

"Thank you, Edward. That was fantastic." He frowned down at my plate, looking pointedly at the potatoes I had left there. "I don't like them, plus they have no nutritional merit, unlike sweet potatoes." He looked like he was about to argue but he couldn't fault my logic on the nutrition.

"Yeah, I can't take the credit for it though. You can find healthy take out if you look hard enough."

"I appreciate you looking hard." I looked up at him through my eyelashes and everything else in my world blurred. Green eyes loomed seductively over me and I was pulled infinitesimally closer to his mouth like we had magnets in our lips. The air was charged with static, our lips scuffed together and, like we had been waiting for an unseen signal, our mouths opened in a synchronised motion to unleash matching yawns.

Massive, body shaking yawns.

Followed by body shaking giggles.

"Way to ruin the moment, Swan."

"You started it!" I punched his arm with no force whatsoever because I was just so tired.

"Whatever. I'll take the blame for this one, but you only get one free pass."

"That would have been so convincing if you hadn't just almost swallowed your face with another yawn." I teased.

"I should go." He yawned at me, trying to get up but losing his balance slightly.

"I can't let you leave, I don't believe you can drive without crashing."

"You're right. I'll call a cab." His hands scrubbed his face before continuing up into his hair, making it stand at every single angle imaginable. My breath caught in my lungs when my mind automatically imagined my hands making it look like that. I couldn't help my actions, but my hands scrunched into his hair, my body pressed firmly into his and I whispered words that surprised even me.

"You can stay here tonight."

**A/N: Hi, review me...I'm needy. **

**Hope you enjoyed it :D**

**twitter = /WithAplomb  
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	5. When Edward Needs Alice's Help

**Disclaimer: Firstly, I'm an idiot...I forgot to do a disclaimer for the first four chapters.**

**I do not own Twilight or anything to do with it...I do own this story though and any theft of it will result in me tracking you down and punching you in the ovaries (a vague disclaimer is nobodies friend).**

**Enjoy :D  
**

**Chapter five – Edward**

**When Edward Needs Alice's Help**

Bella's bedroom was like some sort of den of iniquity with its decoration. It would definitely fall under the category of boudoir. If she wasn't quite so innocent and wide eyed I would suspect she lures a number of young men up for seduction. It was all dark wood and jewel colours, flowing fabrics and the most amount of pillows I have ever seen on one bed. Lights were strung around the bed frame as well as across the walls in looping shapes. She flicked the switch on the wall and they all lit up in place of the centre light one would assume was going to.

"So, uh, this is my room." Her bottom lip disappeared into her mouth to be gnawed on.

"It's nice. I can still go home, or sleep on the couch?" You could have knocked me down with a feather when the invitation for me to stay had dropped from her mouth.

"No...I...would like you to stay." The last part of her sentence rushed quietly out. She wrapped her arms around her torso, looking down and scuffing her foot against the dark wood floor, effectively bracing herself for rejection. The lack of light in the room hid her expressive eyes from me but danced across her cheek and collar bones, highlighting the areas I most wanted to put my lips right at this moment.

"Bella." I crossed the room and uncurled her arms from around her torso before wrapping mine around her in their place. "Things have started backwards for us, but I'm not going to assume I have an all access pass to your body because of this, if that's what you are worried about?" Her cheek pressed into my chest and she let out a little groan.

"Kind of, but not...I'm just all turned around. I don't have anything for you to wear in bed." She changed the subject slightly and I let her, knowing that in the darkness of a quiet room we could reveal our fears without repercussions. So, for the second time in my life, I was desperate to get Bella into bed. Only this time it was for a more gentlemanly reason.

"That's alright." I let her go to pull my top over my head. After pulling the fabric free I felt her eyes on me, her chest was rising and falling heavily as she basically eye fucked me where I stood. She was making it difficult for me to remain still, when all I wanted to do was take the two steps forward and throw her on the bed. "You want to take a picture? Or get your ass ready for bed?"

"Oh, right." She scurried to a drawer, yanked some stuff out and practically sprinted from the room with the pinkest cheeks I'd ever seen. I was feeling pretty smug, truth be told, that I could elicit that kind of reaction from her. I seriously have never wanted someone to want me as much as her before.

I couldn't even describe what was going on in my head to myself. She was alluring, sexy, innocent, vulnerable and the mother of my child. I had only spent a short amount of time with her yet she had marched into my head and set up camp. In a few well placed moves I could already see her moving her way into my heart and that scared me, yet left me feeling exhilarated at the same time.

I have never been in love, I thought I had but those feelings were nothing near as intense as the ones I was feeling for Bella and I was only in _like_ with her. I stripped down to my underwear, balling my socks up and throwing them on the bunched up pile of clothes I had kicked into the corner beside her wardrobe. I was tempted to drape myself over the bed, but it would be too cruel...to both of us. Instead I just sat on the edge, unwilling to crawl under the covers without Bella with me.

There were more photographs in here too, always a repetition of the same people only in different surroundings. Emmett featured heavily all through the years. Christ, he is terrifying. My neck was only just beginning to not hurt from being pinned to the wall by the guy. While it was reassuring that she had protective people around, I didn't like the fact that he obviously thought I was someone she needed protecting from. He didn't know me, he would learn in time that my intent was to take over his role as protector and that I wanted to be the one that she leaned on in times when her own strength was depleted and she needed it from someone else.

Turning back to the photographs I couldn't help but smile when I realised that my child's life was going to be well documented. That soon there would be photographs of a beautiful smiling baby, because with Bella as its mother there was no doubt that he or she would be beautiful.

Finally Bella returned, wearing a pair of shorts and a flimsy vest type thing that clung to the curves of her breasts and I had trouble tearing my eyes away from her.

"Wow. They're quite...tight." She nodded at the tight black boxers I was still wearing.

"Yeah, I like them tight."

"Right."

She pressed her mouth shut tightly, trying to keep the snigger at what I had just said from escaping, and averted her eyes. I stood there like a tool, trying valiantly to keep my mind from going to a seriously dirty place.

"I like them." She finally broke the silence.

"I like what you're wearing too." I got a glimpse of a new Bella smile, one that was 96% shy and 4% smug. "Shall we?" I gestured toward the bed and she jumped slightly before nodding, still chewing on her lip.

The woman hadn't lied. Her bed was probably the most comfortable thing I have ever laid my body on. I couldn't help the groan that burst forth from me, like my joints, muscles and bones combining to make song.

"This is awesome."

"I know, and this is just the summer bedding. Winter duvet is like your mother cuddling you to sleep."

"Can't wait for winter." I muttered, waiting for her to crawl inside the covers.

"I can't remember inviting you for winter."

"I'm like a vampire, I only need invited once then I can come in whenever I like." I informed her. My arms reached out to find her in the darkness. As soon as my fingers touched warm soft skin I hauled her across the bed and wrapped myself around her in a full body hug, our faces touching. Fingers went straight into my hair and I sighed with contentment at the comforting rhythm of massage across my scalp. She had me practically purring. More evidence that I was lion-like, I guess.

"Why did you say I look like a lion?" We were alone in the house, yet I felt compelled to whisper, felt the need to make this more intimate than it already was. She giggled softly, her breath dancing across my face.

"Your hair mostly." Her fingers scrunched my hair to emphasise her point. "And, well, you give off this...I'm loathe to say aura because I don't believe in that bullshit...presence of being a protector and fierce and loyal."

"My hair says that about me?"

"You're all feline-like in the way you move too. That night, I felt like you were stalking me around your bedroom. And I liked it, _really _liked it."

"Lions turn you on?" I growled playfully in her ear making her giggle. The vibrations of her body shaking her against me. My growl deepened as blood flooded away from my brain.

"Not in general, but this particular one definitely does." Emboldened by the darkness her lips kissed across mine gently then pulled away.

"Were you worried that I was going to think that I could have at you any time I wanted?" My thumb stroked in circles where it lay on her hip as I brought up the subject again.

"No." She sighed. "I wasn't worried about that, because I've already figured out that you are kind of a gentleman, one of the few left. I was more worried about my self control. You weren't worried that I wanted to lie you down and go to town on you?" My thumb stopped its circling as I groaned loudly and embarrassingly at her admittance. I really wished I could see her face right now, but I had to take my cues from soft breaths and sighs and the reaction of her body in my arms.

"On my list of worries, that doesn't even chart. On my list of new fantasies it's number one." Her mouth found mine again, her tongue flicking across my lips, her fingers tugging my hair to angle my head as her body arched and pressed into me. With another tug of my hair she got me to moan, in an instant her tongue was against mine. She was pressed entirely into my body, my dick harder than it had ever been in my life and my brain left with precious little blood.

Breaking the kiss I rested my forehead against hers. Regaining control, but keeping my hands on her, I cleared my throat.

"As much as I love kissing you, you were right about me being a gentleman." I informed her, keeping my voice low, my lips moved to her ear. "I'd love nothing more than to sink deep into you right now, Bella." Her breath caught in her throat and her fingers tightened in my hair again, sending a fresh flow of blood to my groin. "But, we haven't even been on a date yet."

"We could count tonight as a date." She squirmed her body against mine, slipping a leg from under mine and hooking it over my hip. "God, I don't know what comes over me when you are around." I groaned as an image of me coming over her flashed through my mind. I slapped my forehead with the heel of my hand to refocus.

"I want to date you properly. Tonight doesn't count because I was so tired I could barely speak."

"I know, I know. Normally I'm pretty strict about the rules of touching. I usually can't bear a stranger's hands on me. But I can't bear you _not_ touching me when you're near."

"So, a date? I'm only free on Sunday this week, does that suit you?"

"Sounds great. Where are we going?"

"Give me a chance, woman. I've only just asked you."

"Fine." I could feel her pout against my cheek and I smiled at her slight petulance. "I guess I can wait until Sunday."

I couldn't help but to kiss her pout away. With a contended sigh, we relaxed into each other and fell asleep in a bundle of twisted limbs.

* * *

I stumbled through work the next day. I awoke first and had to haul myself away from her touch, the constant pull of her making it almost impossible for me to drag on my clothes and leave her in the bed. Before leaving I stroked my hand across her face, a smile spread slowly across her face and a little sigh escaped her parted lips. She was a sleep talker, it was the sweetest thing I'd ever encountered. My name fell from her mouth several times along with numerous moans and a multitude of groans. Occasionally I would hear her mutter Simba and something about lions but that made me chuckle.

I was working right through to Saturday night. I loved Doctoring, but the hours were hell. There was still a year left of my residency, but a year wasn't a great deal of time in the grand scheme of things. My child would be less than five months old when it was over. I wouldn't miss out on a huge amount of development. And Bella would always have the photos to show me.

My schedule this week left me with little time to arrange my date with Bella, however. Once again, she was all I could think about. This time I didn't mistake random strangers with brown hair and eyes for her, because I knew them that little bit better now. I knew the brown was peppered with natural highlights of red that glowed under the right light. I also knew the depths held within her eyes, I saw the abandonment that she hadn't spoken of yet except for a quick sentence about her mother not being in her life. I saw the pain that loss had caused her, yet the spark was not diminished in an unfixable way. It flared up at the times when she looked at me with wonder. Much like I looked at her.

I was definitely going to need Alice's help with the whole date thing. I barely had time to think.

* * *

My shift finally finished and I called Bella as soon as I was out of the building, nodding to a few of the people who I had actually formed some sort of camaraderie with. It was after nine and I hoped she was halfway to bed already because I knew she had been at work for just after eight thanks to the text she had sent me to thank me for staying. Like I would ever need thanks for indulging in that treat.

"Hey Edward." She answered, sounding groggy like I expected.

"Hi, sorry, I just wanted to check in with you."

"Why are you apologising? That's really sweet of you, thanks. I'm good, just about to get into bed."

"Lucky you." I tried to shake the image of her in that vest thing out of my head.

"Have you just finished?"

"Yeah, five minutes ago. I wanted to tell you I spoke to Dr Denali and she can fit you in as a favour to me if you wanted."

"I have my own Doctor, Edward."

"I thought you would, but Tanya is the best in Seattle."

"Tanya?" Her tone switched from warm to clipped and I realised my mistake a little too late. "I'm happy with my Doctor, Edward. Thanks for your concern but I can live without _Tanya_."

"Right, of course, sorry." There was a heavy sigh and silence for a beat from Bella's end.

"No, I am. I'm tired and I snapped at you there. I didn't mean it."

"I understand tiredness." I laughed.

"I know you do. Goodnight Edward."

"Goodnight Bella."

It took me less than ten minutes to make the drive to Alice and Jaspers. They had been texting me separately since Jasper threw me out in the quest for some peace the morning after I told them about Bella. I hadn't been ready to talk then, but now that I needed Alice's help with the date I braced myself for the inevitable well meaning interrogation.

I walked right in, holding my hands over my eyes just in case. Shouting out a greeting I went straight to the kitchen and opened the fridge. There were the usual sundries in there, along with the entire shelf that was dedicated to alcohol. Not quite sure if I wanted soft alcohol or hard I opened up the freezer and perused the alcohol shelf in there too.

"Hey bro', why so alcoholic?" Alice's head appeared from behind the door, her nose crinkling at me in a smile.

"I'm anaesthetising myself against your inevitable onslaught of questions, baby sister."

"Knock yourself out." She bowed slightly, backing up and making sweeping gestures with her arms.

"Thanks."

"Grab me a beer, bitch!" Jasper yelled to me from his office. Weighing up the options I concluded that because I was back in at work at ten I wasn't going to hammer it. Picking two beers from the fridge I popped off the tops with the opener that Jasper had somehow sweet talked my sister into fixing permanently to the worktop.

Jasper took the bottle from my hand as he walked lazily by me to the living room. Alice wrapped herself around him on the sofa I had no intention of sitting on ever again and I sat on the floor, my back against the other couch, my legs bent at the knee with my elbows resting wearily on them. I could tell Alice was waiting for a signal, I glanced over to her and noticed that she was practically vibrating with anticipation.

"Go ahead." I took a deep pull of the beer and looked up.

"Have you talked to Bella?"

"Yes, we talked, we talked some more and I met her best friend from childhood and you, Jasper, will never guess who he is."

"He?"

"Yes, he."

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Are you retarded?"

"No, obtuse."

"Definitely not acute anyway."

"He's acute to me." Alice laughed, her little hand pressed against her husband's face. Shaking my head at them and rolling my eyes I laughed along with Alice.

"Emmett McCarty."

"No fuckin' way!"

"I have the bruises to prove it...well, the red mark where he pinned me to the wall by the neck with his forearm."

"He hurt you?" Alice's eyes were massive and round at the thought of her big brother getting his ass kicked by a pro football player.

"No, just walked in at the wrong moment and read something wrong. It was a pretty valid reaction, Bella read him the riot act and he's actually a really cool guy."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"That's awesome." I just nodded.

Alice started with the questions again. I explained that we were keeping the baby, I kept the nickname to myself. She squealed like it was her that was pregnant and declared that she and Bella were going to be the best of friends. From what I had seen of Bella I could imagine her being swept away by my sister like so many people before her, but I broke it to her that she seemed pretty popular as it was. I let slip about the fact that I had taken her dinner the previous night and had stayed the night, being careful to quantify that it was a chaste night of rest because, for some reason, it was difficult to sleep without her around and had been since that night last month.

Jasper snorted at that, mentally deducting some man points from my scoreboard while Alice awed like I thought she would because she is a consummate romantic. I reiterated that they absolutely could not tell Mom and Dad, because in the first trimester there was always the chance that the embryo could be reabsorbed into the body, avoiding the use of the term miscarriage because I just didn't want to say it out loud.

"I have to say, man, that you are kind of radiating the happy." Jasper commented. "A big part of that down to the Baby Momma?" I laughed at the phrase and half nodded.

"Actually, that's also kind of part of why I'm here. I need your help, Alice."

"What about mine?" Jasper mock pouted and looked more than a bit wrong.

"You can help too, stop being petulant. So, Bella and I have a date." After Jasper stopped laughing at that I continued. "I need some ideas. I'm working until Sunday and I don't have much time to set things up. Help your brother out?"

"How can I refuse the path of true love?"

"Has Jasper been reading you poetry in bed again?"

"Yes, and then we make sweet, sweet, sweaty love all through the night, Edward." Jasper bit, a little embarrassed that I knew about his penchant for wooing my sister with poetry even though they had been together since college and married for four years.

"Jesus, sorry I mentioned it."

"What does she like?"

"I don't really know, we hardly know each other. The only thing I know for sure is that she doesn't like is potatoes and she does like me. I hope."

"The girl doesn't like potatoes? Weird." I ignored Jasper's comment and focused on Alice.

"Well, that isn't a lot to go on, you know? I'll help you, but you have to let me meet her."

"On our date?"

"No, dummy, but I want a proper introduction. Oh, I know! You can both some to dinner next week."

"I'll run it past her, but she is busy too, plus my shifts..." I trailed off at the look on Alice's face, the one that she perfected when she was three and makes everybody melt and run to do anything she says. "I'm off Wednesday night, I'll see what I can do." She did a little bounce and clapped her hands in victory.

"I need a stronger drink." I rose to my feet and walked to the freezer.

"Bring me my JD, bitch."

**A/N: A couple of people mentioned that it was odd to get 4 updates in a night, but I thought that it was better to give people something to get their teeth into rather than just the short first chapter. In all honestly I was hoping people would fall in love with them a little bit and therefore want to stick with it :D**

**I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to tell me how much using the medium of review (not dance, I'm rubbish at interpreting dance)  
**


	6. When Edward and Bella Went on a Date

**Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Twilight saga...I just enjoying messing with SM's work.**

**Chapter six – Bella**

**When Edward and Bella Went on a Date**

The rest of my week was a dichotomy of fast and slow. It was fast because work kept me busy pretty much every second. When work wasn't occupying my time I had dinner with Rosalie and Emmett. He was still mortified that he had reacted in such an extreme way with Edward.

"He isn't going to hate me, is he B?"

"No, he's actually a big fan." This placated him and no doubt stroked his surprisingly tiny ego.

But the time seemed to drag between the slight moments of interaction Edward and I were able to steal. He called me every day, and texted a couple of times through the day as well. It was soothing to hear his voice before bed and it was the time I looked forward to most. Except for when he mentioned some Doctor who was the "best in Seattle". I had kind of irrationally flipped out about that, even though I managed to contain it to a snippy sentence. I don't know what had come over me, but him mentioning another woman's name in such a complimentary way made my stomach churn with jealousy. That was something I was going to have to keep an eye on.

There was still a part of me that burned with embarrassment at basically throwing myself at him when he was wrapped around me in my bed, but I was thankful that he had toned it down. He certainly was a gentleman and that just made me all the more eager to spend as much time with him as possible. Every new thing that I was learning about him was making me more intrigued. He was kind, thoughtful, clever, witty and flat out funny at times.

Plus, he looked like some sort of god in those tight boxers he wears. I was struck almost dumb when I came back into the bedroom and was confronted with his slightly tanned and toned body. I really need to get a picture of that, not that I could ever forget the image because it was indelibly burned onto my retinas.

I was excited about my date with Edward. I had no idea where we were going and I usually hated surprises but for some reason I didn't seem to mind when it came to Edward. He could surprise me all he wanted. The only thing I had managed to drag out of him was that I was to dress casual and that he would pick me up at twelve. A day time date sounded like it had the potential to be fun.

Rosalie insisted on camping out at mine on the Saturday night to help me with an outfit and to do something with my hair in the morning. I protested until she admitted that Emmett was going out with his team mates and that she hated staying in the house alone. It takes a huge amount of effort for Rosalie to admit what she would call weakness, so after that how could I refuse?

We sat with a bottle of wine, her drinking it and me watching her with narrowed eyes of jealousy. I indulged in a secretly bought bag of cheese puffs. What Edward didn't know wouldn't hurt him, I just had to be sure that I didn't have tell tale orange fingers for our date.

"So, Emmett and I were thinking that we could postpone the wedding until after the arrival of Mini Bella." She casually told me, sipping down another mouthful of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape that I adored. If she didn't love me so much I would have thought she was doing this on purpose.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Well, for one, you would be able to indulge in the champagne toasts and other such frivolities." She eyed me with amusement as she took another sip. "Plus, I wasn't sure that you would want to do the whole matron of honour thing when you were around eight months pregnant."

"I would never ask you to postpone your wedding just because I'll be heavily pregnant, and you know I would never duck out on the privileges of being your matron of honour." I replied passionately.

"We know you would never ask us to do that, that's why we already went ahead and did it."

"You what?"

"It's already done, I made the calls this week. The invitations don't go out until around six weeks prior and the save the date cards were due to go out next week so we managed to stop them. Besides, I get more time to plan it now." She smiled.

"You are nuts, but I do love you." I leaned over to give her a hug, taking a huge whiff of the wine as I passed the glass.

"Did you just smell my wine?"

"Do not judge me, it's one of the few pleasures of wine I can still indulge in." Rosalie's arms tightened around me as she laughed.

"I do love you, you little freak."

* * *

Clothes hangers clanging together woke me in the morning. The rustle of fabrics being tossed aside made me open my eyes. How Rosalie was even awake before me considering she obliterated an entire bottle of wine last night is beyond me. I could hear her muttering something about how she should always be with me when I bought clothes and saying some pretty severe things about my collection of comic book t-shirts. I hadn't realised she held such a dislike for my dressed down attire.

"I know you're awake."

"How?"

"You stopped mumbling Edward's name. Smitten kitten much?" She grinned at me by throwing her head between the racks of clothes from the back of the closet. If I had much say in the matter, which I apparently don't, one massive closet would have been enough for me, but because Rosalie insisted on helping me, I'm "fashion retarded" allegedly, I have to have a free standing wardrobe too.

Sitting up I combed my fingers through my birds nest hair, trying to think of a suitable biting comeback to the smitten kitten line.

"You paused for too long there, sweets. No witty comeback for you."

"I'll think of one later and text you it." I muttered. Wit abandons me in the morning.

"I think I have an idea about what you should wear."

"Casual, remember Rose? That was the brief."

"Honey, you can be casual and sexy as all hell at the same time, trust me." With a wink her blonde head disappeared back into a pile of clothes.

I didn't quite understand how it took so much time and concentration to throw together an outfit, but I was never one for co-ordinating colours and matching accessories. I was definitely more of a throw it on and hope kind of girl. Even though, I have to admit, I did kind of miss Rosalie being around to put together my work clothes. It was a Sunday night tradition that was lost when she moved out.

Then I remembered why Rosalie was picking me an outfit and actually gave a little squeal of excitement. There were no words to describe how excited I was at actually having a date with Edward. And how nervous I was too. We had spent time together, but this was official. This was the first tentative step towards a full blown relationship, depending on how it went. I could just imagine doing something hugely embarrassing and ruining it all.

"Bella? Go shower, Emmett will be here with breakfast soon."

Obeying Miss Hale I hopped out of bed and under the steaming water. It didn't take long and I was thankful that I kept regular waxing appointments so that I didn't have to bother with shaving my legs or the rest of that time consuming crap. I had known Rosalie roughly a month before she extolled the virtues of waxing and I was a convert from word go. Minutes of discomfort that saved that amount of time? Sign me the hell up. Plus, it limited my exposure to sharp implements and minimised the opportunity to accidently cleave off a limb.

Wrapping my hair in a towel and throwing on a robe I joined Rosalie back in my room. She had made my bed for me so I gave her a quick hug because it was things like this that touched me because she remembered everything I ever told her.

It had been one of those baring-your-soul kinds of evening and I was upset over my Mother's lack of contact, crying that I never got to experience even the smallest tokens of love and rites of passage with her, like her making my bed for me, soothing a fever with a cool cloth on my forehead or even talking me through my first period. That conversation with my Dad had been awkward to say the least, I never knew a person's skin could actually turn all the colours of the rainbow before that.

"Right, so we have a choice of three outfits that I have deemed acceptable." She nodded towards the clothes laid out on the bed.

"No skirts." We shoved the skirt outfit onto the floor and I appraised the other two.

"I didn't even know you owned a pair of skinny jeans, Bella. You could make this your last hurrah, because let's face it, you won't be able to fit into them for a while soon."

"I see your point."

"Plus, I guarantee that your ass would look so fucking amazing in them I'd be jealous." She shrugged.

That sold it on the jeans for me, and she was right. How long did I have left to wear that pair of jeans so tight they looked painted on before I was all swollen from the life I carried inside me? She had a light, ¾ sleeve purple and black plaid shirt laid out next to a white vest and red sweater so I chose the shirt and earned myself an approving nod.

"This is going to make me gag a little so I'll say it quick. Your purple Chucks would go well with that outfit." She pretended to heave a little before leaving me to throw on some sweats to wear down to breakfast. Rosalie didn't believe in anything but the highest stilettos, which made her tower above lesser mortals. I sometimes thought that she just liked having the ability to look down her nose at people in a superior manner, but she always had to look up to Emmett.

We ate breakfast when Emmett arrived loaded down with bags of food, most of which was for him to stave off his burgeoning hangover. It was around this time that my butterflies revived. My stomach started fluttering so hard I was scared to open my mouth in case something flew out. Just the thought of spending the day with Edward excited them to the point where I almost couldn't sit still.

"Have you started heaving in the morning yet?"

"Not yet, I'm hoping it won't happen, not everyone gets morning sickness. It's just one of those generic things that movies use to make it obvious someone is up the duff."

"Up the duff?"

"I read it somewhere." I shrugged as he laughed at the expression.

"When does it start kicking?"

"They start moving at about 7 weeks or something, but don't kick until, like, 20 weeks I think."

Emmett had become fascinated by the process of pregnancy and was fast becoming an expert. He had brought two bags of books with him this morning, each with a cracked spine. I loved that he was reading up on it to help me through, but I would have thought he knew this information already.

"Are you testing me?"

"I'm not about to let you go through this ignorant, you need to know the basics." He shrugged, like he was my pregnancy tutor. "There will be written test in a couple of weeks...and the practical is going to be a total bitch."

* * *

Edward sat in his car from 11:43 until 11:56. That was when he knocked on my front door and I opened it with a warm smile. He looked still tired from his shift yesterday, but it wasn't as noticeable as it had been the night he stayed. We smiled at each other in silence for what felt like minutes until he cleared his throat and handed over the bunch of sunflowers he had clasped in his hands.

"Thanks."

"They came in a vase." He told me, wincing as soon as the words were out of his mouth. "Those weren't the first words I wanted to say to you."

"As first words go they could have been worse."

"I wanted to tell you that you looked beautiful." I felt my cheeks pink up at his words and looked down at myself. I was hardly what you would call show stopping. His finger tipped my chin up so that he could look in my eyes. It was such an unabashed and searing look that I suddenly felt naked before him. Unable to hold his gaze for long I shook the vase of sunflowers at him.

"I'll just go put these in the kitchen."

I felt him walk behind me, I didn't need to hear his heavy footsteps when the skin on my uncovered arms was thrumming from the energy I felt from him.

"I thought they would look nice on your kitchen table." His mouth was close to my ear, sending a shiver through me. I placed them down next to the heart I had found and taken to tracing as I sat at the table.

"You were right." Turning, I smiled at him shyly, abruptly unable to cope with the torrent of sensations running through me. I was finding it harder and harder to contain myself around him. Whenever he was near I wanted him to touch me, even in the most innocent of ways. I was dazzled by the megawatt smile on his face when I finally looked at him properly.

He was wearing loose jeans that hung low on his hips, his torso was covered by a t-shirt that looked along a similar theme to the one I was wearing the day he came round the first time.

"Hey." I smiled and reached out my hand, running my fingers across the shape on his chest. "I have an Iron Man one too."

"I remember. So, how do you feel about animals?"

* * *

"You drive a Volvo?" I couldn't help the tone of amusement in my voice. I had a manlier car than him.

"It's one of the safest cars available, and I am going to be a Daddy after all, so I need to have a safe car."

"How long have you had this safe Dad car?"

"A couple of years." He admitted, grinning at the sound of my laughter bouncing around the enclosed space. I ruffled his hair a little because he just looked so damn adorable with his grin and sparkling eyes.

"So, where are we going?"

"I'm not sure I want to tell you until we are there."

"Oh come on!" I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

"If you're going to act like that then I'm definitely not telling you."

"Please?" I gazed up at him copying Emmett's patented puppy dog look and batted my eyelashes for good measure.

"You aren't playing fair." He told me once his eyes were safely back on the road.

"You left me no choice." I tugged on the sleeve of his t-shirt, accidently on purpose grazing lightly across the skin on his arm.

"Hands to yourself until the parking brake is locked and loaded please."

I retreated to my side of the safest car in the world suitably chastised. I didn't want to be responsible for Edward crashing the car on out first date. I swallowed down the giddy little laugh that always tried to break free whenever I let myself think about the fact that we were on a date. I watched the signs as they flew past the car. For one so apparently concerned with our wellbeing he was driving pretty damn fast. I edged a little closer to take a peek at the speedometer but was gently pushed back to my side of the car.

"Don't be a passenger seat driver." He quickly glanced at me before returning his gaze to the road.

Yet another sign whizzed past the car and I finally worked out where we were going. His animal question suddenly made sense.

"We are going to the zoo?" I kept my voice steady, not letting him know my feelings about it either way.

"Damn. I was hoping you wouldn't work it out until we got there. Do you want me to turn back?" His forehead creased while he awaited my answer.

"Are you shitting me?" _Great, Bella, way to act like a lady_. "No I don't want you to turn back!" He graced me with a full look this time, taking in my beaming face and excited eyes. I hadn't been to the zoo in years. The last time was when Emmett's Dad took us when we were thirteen and we had acted all snotty about being treated like little kids.

"Really?"

"Yes. Put your foot down!"

* * *

We drove the rest of the way in silence but I was practically bouncing in my seat. My face was pressed into the window as we neared our destination, as if I would be able to see the animals from the car park.

"It bodes well for me that you are easily pleased." Edward joked when he finally parked. My fingers scrabbled for the door handle but he reached over and removed my hands from it. "Let me." He exited the car and hurried around to my side of the car. His hand reached down for me to take and take it I gladly did, hopping out of the car and managing to skid on some loose pebbles.

"Ooops."

"Maybe I should put you on a time out. I didn't expect you to get so excited." He joked while steadying me. Once he was sure I wasn't in danger of toppling over he dropped his hands. I noticed and mourned the loss of his touch immediately.

"Come on, let's get in there." I skipped a little in front and held out my hand. My skin hummed as we laced our fingers together and he returned my excited smile.

Edward insisted on paying both of our entries but I made it clear that I would be buying lunch. The sky was clear and the sun shone down on us brightly, a light breeze lifting the ends of my hair and rippling through his. For the first time I noticed the glinting red hue hidden by the brown under normal light. Once again I couldn't stop myself from touching it. He bent his head down, grinning shyly as my fingers ran through the soft strands.

"Left or right?" He asked. I looked both ways, weighing up the options and biting my bottom lip in thought.

"Left." I nodded, sure of my decision. With our hands clasped together we turned, heading toward the Northern Trail.

Edward had patently done his homework for our date. I don't quite know where he found the time to learn about the snowy owl and the brown bear but he did and I was touched by the amount of thought and effort he had so obviously put into it. We wandered hand in hand along the paths, stopping to view the many and varied animals. I refused to be drawn too close to the Butterfly Forest because even though my stomach was full of them in Edward's presence, in actuality they freaked me the hell out. Edward took issue with the wolves for some reason and hurried me past them without even letting me look at them.

I passed on going into the Raptor Centre mainly because it made me think of Jurassic Park. When I admitted this to Edward he laughed so hard at me I thought he was going to rupture something. He pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pressing a kiss into my hair, all the while laughing as I pouted. But inside I was beaming because his arm was around me and his lips had been on me. His laugh was like music and sunshine, my soul danced and bloomed as the noise enveloped me.

I bought us a lunch of sandwiches and a juice box. We walked in a smiling silence as families milled around us. Occasionally we would catch each other's eye and smile with the knowledge of our secret, that one day in the not so distant future that would be us. Whether together or apart we were soon to be parents. Sometimes a particularly ugly kid would stray across our path and we would look at each other in a slight panic, wondering if our child was going to be an unfortunate blend of us both but we kept those thoughts to ourselves because karma is a bitch and pretty fast acting too.

As we approached the African Savanna after spending a little too long watching the sun bears I wondered at the motive for the theme of the date.

"Edward?" I tongued the ice cream he had bought me and he stared at me for a second before clearing his throat and nodding for me to go on. "What made you pick the zoo? I love it, just in case you didn't hear me the first forty times I told you."

"Uh, in the spirit of full disclosure, it was actually my sister's idea."

"Really?"

"Well, she helped me with a suggestion, the zoo was all me."

"Well, the zoo is the best part." He quirked an eyebrow and looked down at himself. "Discounting you, obviously."

"Obviously." Smirking at each other, I swung our clasped hands between us.

"What was her suggestion?"

"She suggested that pretty soon our lives are going to be even more hectic than they already are and that we should take the time to experience things as just us for the last time. I thought she was right, this could be the last time that it's just you, Bella, and me, Edward, taking a trip to the zoo because the next time we are here we will be Mom and Dad."

"I hadn't thought of that." I admitted.

"So, you don't think it's a bit strange? Because Alice can sometimes come off like that to new people." He looked down at me with a little crease between his eyes. Automatically my fingers travelled up and smoothed out the lines.

"No, I like it. She's right, we should be selfish and enjoy these things and keep them for ourselves for one last time. But, I think I'm going to like being here as a Mom too."

"I think I'm going to enjoy being here as a Dad." His head bent down as I lifted up onto my toes, we indulged in a soft and chaste kiss before I realised where we were.

"Lions."

"Yeah. I thought you might like the lions."

"Look." I pointed. "That one looks just like you!" He growled into my ear, his arms wrapping around my waist from behind. Giggling I continued to point at the lions. "That one definitely has your hair. And that one has your smile. Are you sure you aren't half lion? It's a bit like meeting your family."

"Speaking of which, my sister only agreed to help me with this if I agreed that I would ask you to dinner with her and Jasper on Wednesday night. She's pretty desperate to meet you."

I thought about it, thought about meeting Alice and her husband. She sounded fun and pretty sweet if truth be told. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous. Edward was obviously loved and I wondered how I would measure up to their expectations of what he deserved. Plus, I wondered how I would measure up to the girls he had brought home previously. I would have to meet his family at some point, the sooner would probably be the better option.

"Sure, I'm free on Wednesday."

**A/N: Please leave a review, I appreciate the feedback. **

**So, I was thinking about recruiting a pre-reader or something because my best mate reads it before I post it but I need someone more impartial I think, for some constructive criticism. If you're interested say so in the review you leave and I'll get back to you :)  
**


	7. When Bella Met Alice

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or anything to do with it...I do own a snazzy red satchel (y'know, a satchel...like Indiana Jones...nevermind.)

**Chapter 7 – Edward**

**When Bella Met Alice**

Alice, in her relentless quest to host the best dinner party in the whole of Seattle, had been bombarding me incessantly with questions about Bella. As soon as one occurred to her she would immediately seek out the answer.

"What kind of food does she like?"

"What will she be wearing?"

"How old is she again?"

"What isn't she allowed?"

It was at the unfortunate point where I was avoiding answering her calls. This had merely made her more mercenary and somehow able to call me when I had relaxed my guard even slightly.

The calls were annoying, the texts were just as insistent. She even roped Jasper into it and he would preface his question with _I'm sorry but she's my wife and therefore the holder of my balls..._. I wasn't paying attention while waiting for some labs coming back and I automatically answered my phone.

"Alice." I sighed.

"Last time, I promise, but you have to give me a clue! I want this to go well, I want to be her friend and I don't want to let you down." Her voice trailed off at the end and I could only just imagine the look on her face.

"Fine. I don't know what kind of food she likes, I just know that she doesn't like normal potatoes and she loves cheese puffs for some unfathomable reason. Look up the stuff she isn't allowed on the internet because the list is too long for me to go over now. She's twenty seven, and I have no idea what she will be wearing, but whatever it is I'm sure that she will look beautiful."

"What kind of music does she like?"

"Oh come on! I'm not sure, I think the same bands as us. Look, the only thing I know for sure that she likes is my hair. She can't keep her hands off it."

"I can't theme my dinner party around your hair on such short notice!"

"Alice, please, listen to me. Whatever you put together will be great. I want you to hang up the phone, count to ten and then find Jasper and make him do whatever he does to calm you the fuck down...I don't want to ever know what it is, but just do it." My labs came back as we were wrapping up the conversation.

"Ok." She said in a small voice, like I had just chastised her. I knew she would be pouting out her bottom lip and her eyes would be glassy with moisture and I felt like a dick.

"I'm sorry, I'm busy. I love you sis' and I'm really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night."

"Thanks Edward. See you tomorrow." She hung up as I looked over the results in my hand.

"Shit." With a deep sigh I walked along the corridor to my patient, not relishing the news I was about to impart.

Sometimes, the bad guys win and I'm the asshole who has to break the news.

* * *

Wednesday dawned far too early for my liking. I managed to shower and haul my ass back into the hospital for a few hours to catch up on my charts. I didn't get a chance to do it before I left last night, having spent the last hour with the man I had just diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had come in on the recommendation of his doctor and it was a good thing he did. If he had left it another couple of days I wouldn't have been able to offer any help. As it was, the time he had left to spend with the people he loved was a guestimate.

It was circumstances like that that made me want to pack it all in. But, then I'd see the gratitude at my care and concern and I couldn't imagine my life being any other way. The good times, the times I caught symptoms that would normally have been missed, the times I was able to tell a family that their loved one was going to come through this, they far outweighed the bad and I was thankful I was in a position to help people.

It didn't make the bad times any better, however.

I sent Bella a quick text before I entered the hospital. I hoped she would receive it when she woke up but suspected that she would already be awake and almost on her way to work.

_I look forward to seeing you tonight – E _

Her reply was almost immediate, making me smile and affording me a little more spring in my step.

_Looking forward to seeing you too...it feels like an age since I saw your mane – B_

I don't know what she liked so much about my hair but I loved when her little hands sank in and raked through it, mainly because it meant she was so close that I could smell her. I couldn't quite place her smell, but it was fresh and free and made me think of meadows, cut grass and fresh homemade lemonade. I couldn't get enough of it.

I made quick work of the charts, sequestering myself away into the empty on call room. I managed a solid couple of hours before my concentration was broken by my beeping phone.

_Meet me at Whole Foods, bitch._

_No._

_Yes. Alice's shop is getting audited. We have shopping to do. _

_Fine. _

_See you in an hour._

I couldn't really say no when Alice obviously couldn't get away from work to pick up the last few things she needed. Spending time with Jasper was never a particular chore anyway and we hadn't had a chance to hang out recently mano et mano.

I exited the on call room, anxious to avoid the clutches of Nurse Mallory. The woman was tenacious and intent on bagging a doctor. It doesn't matter how many times I've pried her talons off me she just wouldn't take the hint. It had intensified the past couple of weeks, it was like she could smell the possible happy ever after I was cultivating with Bella and was hell bent on destroying it. I was like a child trying to avoid the beady eye of an overly watchful parent...only I was in fear of being subjected to naughty touching I most definitely wouldn't return instead of a scolding.

I spotted her blonde hair turn a corner in the opposite direction so bolted out, threw my charts where they belonged, shouted goodbye to the people I actually liked and ran like my ass was on fire to my car. It was perhaps an extreme reaction to a slight inconvenience but I couldn't be bothered dealing with it, not when I had Bella to look forward to tonight.

Jasper was marching back and forth in front of the store when I pulled into the parking lot. His longish dirty blonde hair was looking a bit crazy, I caught sight of my own and sighed because it didn't look much better. He hadn't noticed me as I jogged up behind him and he jumped a little when I stopped beside him.

"Alright?"

"Yeah, not sure what half of this shit is, though." He shook a printed list in my face and I took it.

"Yeah, me neither." We shrugged at each other. "We can ask someone."

"I guess. Alice usually doesn't let me do this, she says she married me for my looks and not my shopping ability. Which is good, considering she does enough shopping for the both of us."

We spent over an hour in the store picking up the stuff on Alice's list, we did 3 circuits before we finally submitted and asked an assistant for her help. This took a while too because she kept throwing us goofy smiles and trying to make sexy eyes at us before looking confused when we didn't respond.

"You two make a really cute couple." She threw at us when we were almost finished. Jasper smirked at me and took my hand before bringing them both up and stroking my cheek. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stop from guffawing.

"Thanks, ma'am. I think so too." He drowned the sentence in his thick southern accent before kissing the back of my hand. "This one here won't settle down. Keeps thinking he likes girls and tryin' to persuade me the same." The girl's face flushed bright purple, her slack jaw pulling her mouth open.

"Don't..." I stuttered out through my captive laughter.

"Say, ma'am, you wouldn't be interested in a little experiment now, would you? It sure would help us out."

"Uh, anything to help, sir." She was putting our shopping through the register and I bagged it up quickly, knowing exactly what Jasper was up to and unable to stop it until we were ready to leave. Willing the girl to hurry up I paid no attention to the fact that I just put eggs on the bottom and loaded a gallon of milk on top of them.

"Well, I was in need of a cute little thing like yourself to prove once and for all that I was definitely into guys."

"Oh." She finally had everything put through and I threw my card at her, knowing full well Jasper wasn't going to until he was finished teasing.

"So, I'll need to be_ into_...you...if you get my meaning, ma'am."

"I...uh..."

"Ok, Jasper,_ honey,_ you've made your point." I told him, practically throwing the bags into his arms. His eyebrow quirked as he awaited the words from me to finish this completely. Rolling my eyes I continued. "I am fully gay, I am fully yours."

"Yeah, you are." He smirked. "Sorry hun', catch ya next time." He addressed the girl again, subtly flashing his wedding ring at her. "You were integral to my dastardly plan to get this tool to admit his real feelings." With a wink we were on our way out. I waited until he had put the shopping into his car before I punched him solidly on the arm

"You're a dick."

"Yes, I am. But you usually don't let it get to that point."

"I didn't think you were going to continue!"

Jasper had been pulling shit like this since I met him. He had this need to assert his dominance over his male friends every once and a while. He learned early on to not do that with me, but sometimes he still tried his luck. Today was the first time in years he had tried to get me with it.

We went for a quick drink in a local bar. I was careful, knowing that I would be picking Bella up later in the evening so I nursed one beer as Jasper and I caught up. He told me about the book he was writing, it was a sequel to the book he had published a year ago about a detective. It was a gritty film noir style novel that had won him a great deal of acclaim. The film rights had been bought but nothing had come of it so far. He told me he was trying to write through a block but it was just too easy to be distracted by other things, like his wife.

"I'm practically begging her to stay with me every day because I can't get past this stupid fucking block." He admitted, taking a swig of his beer. "She understands, because she's Alice, but she doesn't _understand_, y'know?"

"Yeah, and I don't know what to say to help you really. Don't the great writers say that you just have to keep writing? Even if you discard all of it, so long as you're getting something onto the page."

"Yeah, but I'm not feeling it at all. I'm locked into this three book deal and all I want to do is practice law."

"Find a way out of the contract with your lawyer mind then." I grinned and saw him begin some sort of dastardly lawyer plan in his head.

"I think I'll look over the contract tomorrow. I have a ridiculous number of sweet potatoes to prepare when I get home today, so can't do it then."

"Alice is going a little extreme?"

"Alice is going _a lot_ extreme. She just really wants it to be perfect. You know what she's like when she can _see_ something."

I did know what she was like when she could _see_ something. Since we were little she could predict things and I never knew how she did it. She could look at something and just know how things were going to play out. She told me the day after she met Jasper that she saw him propose to her and with that knowledge she calmed her crazy and slightly put on quirks to become the woman she is today.

When I was seven Mom and Dad let me pick out a puppy. As soon as Alice saw it she cried. She cried for days and days and nothing we did could make her stop. Finally, after four days she stopped and loved that puppy with all of her heart and she never once told anyone what had made her cry.

One day we were playing with other kids in the yard and Seth got out of the gate, running straight across the road and into another garden. I yelled at him to come back and when he didn't I ran straight after him, still calling his name. Alice was beside me, I don't know how she kept up with me but she did. Eventually Seth came bounding over the road towards us and I saw a car speeding towards him. Alice launched her body against mine, her arms wrapping around my neck as she yanked me to the ground to prevent me from running into the road to save Seth. Struggling to get free I heard the tyres of the car squeal against the soft summer asphalt before Seth barked. Without looking I was sure he had been run over but his massive smelly tongue had licked across my face seconds later.

"_Alice?"_

"_Don't. I changed it, it's ok." _

I never knew whether she changed Seth being hit or me for running out to him but I knew that she had saved one of us that day. That's when I knew for sure that my little sister was as special as I always thought.

"She must have seen Bella coming." Jasper commented, eyeing me speculatively.

"Can't ever be sure about what Alice sees coming." I countered, knowing that she kept most of it to herself.

"True, but I'll bet she already knows the sex of your child, Daddy."

* * *

The time to pick Bella up finally arrived after much sitting and waiting in my apartment twiddling my thumbs and considering going early just to sit outside her house for a while like I did on Sunday. I had left Jasper after I finished my beer, taking the slow way home and listening to some music in the car. Just wasting some time. I realised quite quickly that I was also wasting gas and parked up. It only took fifteen minutes for me to get ready and that left me with all the time to spare.

Fuck it.

I raced over to Bella's, unable to stay away any longer. That invisible pull still present even when we weren't in the same room. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and inhale her intoxicating scent. I considered waiting in the car when I stopped in front of her house, but I looked up and noticed the curtains swish back into place so I knew she had spotted me.

The door swung open as I approached it and she took my breath away. It took all of my willpower to remain at a normal pace and not run to her. Her hair had been curled and swept to the side in a complicated looking bun, her body was being hugged by a strapless dress the exact colour of my eyes and her feet were in simple black heels with red soles that were sexy as hell. My eyes fell on her lips that formed an excited smile, the redness had been enhanced but it didn't look like she was wearing lipstick or gloss.

"Hi." She breathed as I wrapped my arms around her in greeting, my mouth closed over hers and our lips moulded together. Her tongue licked across my bottom lip, pulling it into her mouth and grazing it with her teeth. As with every other time we were near her hands dived into my hair and she groaned a little against me.

_Definitely not lipstick or gloss. _

"Hi." I rested my forehead against hers and returned her greeting. "You look stunning."

"You look handsome, as always."

"Sorry I'm early, but I couldn't stay away."

"I'm ok with that." She laughed, stepping back and taking my hand to pull me into the house but I stopped her.

"Should we just go? Alice won't mind us being early, and I'm afraid that alone behind closed doors I'll mess up your appearance."

"I'm ok with that." She repeated, gracing me with another laugh. "I'll just go get my bag." My hand was reluctant to let her go, our fingers touching until she had pulled far enough away to drop the contact.

"Alright, let's go."

"Just a second." I stepped into the house, wrapping her up in my arms again and pushing the door shut. Spinning her around I pressed her back into the door, my nose dropping to her collar bone and trailing up along her jaw, neck and stopping only when I had buried it into her hair, sniffing deeply as I went and memorising the scent of her skin, that citrus and grass smell invaded me and was followed by the smell of her hair, a smell of honey and oats that made my stomach churn happily. I let out a groan just as she shivered against me. "Sorry, I just really wanted to do that." I whispered as I stood back. A flush had spread across her cheeks and neck, her chest rising and falling heavily. Her bottom lip disappeared into her mouth again to be chewed upon, her eyes boring into mine.

"Any time you want to do that, you just go right ahead."

We walked to my car hand in hand, I opened the door for her and finally we were on our way. Sharing an enclosed space with Bella was an exquisite agony. The smell of her filled the cabin, distracting me. The last time we had driven together was a trying time because I just wanted to look at her but I was concerned with driving safely. The fact that she had trouble keeping her hands to herself was also an issue. I was so immersed in driving responsibly that I forgot what song had been playing when I cut the engine.

"Oh my God, Lady GaGa, Edward?"

"There's still a lot for you to learn, Bella, and my sometimes dubious taste in music is something I had hoped to keep from you for a while." I admitted.

"We all have skeletons in our respective closets...I'm hoping that this is your worst?"

"Uh, yeah, that I can think of anyway."

The drive to Alice and Jasper's didn't take long. They only lived ten minutes away from Bella, you could draw a triangle on a map between our homes. I liked that she lived close to my family, my parents lived in the opposite direction but still only ten minutes away. She was quiet the rest of the drive, but a little grin was plastered to her face and it was another new one. One day I would know the meaning behind each one as well as having met it before.

"I'm scared." She admitted to me, gripping one of my hands with both of hers.

"Don't be, you're perfect and they'll love you." I kissed her temple as she snorted at my words.

Alice opened the door excitedly when I knocked, it was almost immediate like she had been lying in wait for us. Knowing her she probably had. She smiled widely at us both, giving me a quick one armed hug but wrapping both arms around Bella, leaving her a little stunned.

"Hi Bella, it's so nice to meet you! God, you smell nice." Bella looked a little overwhelmed already but she pulled herself together and hugged my sister back after letting go of my hand.

"Thanks." She smiled genuinely at Alice and let her take her hand to pull her inside the house.

"I love your dress."

"Thanks, my friend Rosalie got it for me from one of the boutiques in Freemont." She shrugged. "It reminded me of Edward's eyes...and yours I guess." She laughed, looking from Alice's emerald eyes to mine.

"And your shoes!" Alice lifted both of Bella's hands out wide to look down at her shoes. "Louboutins, I have nothing to teach you." She giggled and Bella joined in.

"I can't take all the credit, Rosalie does my shopping." Bella admitted.

Jasper joined us, taking a space next to me and watching as Alice cast her spell on Bella. We could almost see it sparking through the air and descend on her. Jasper nudged my ribs to make me look at him, he mouthed _hot_ and gave me a thumbs up. I rolled my eyes but nodded in agreement. When it looked like Bella was about to be overwhelmed by Alice I cleared my throat to get her attention.

"Bella, this is Jasper." Jasper closed the distance between them in two steps and pulled Bella into a hug much like Alice had.

"Oh my god." They groaned in unison, their bodies relaxing against each other and Bella's hands clutching the fabric of Jasper's shirt. I would have been slightly put out except for the fact that Jasper had this effect on everyone he met for the first time. He projected warmth and comfort and people just soaked it up.

"I'm sorry, but you're just so...comfortable. That was like hugging my best friend." Bella's face was entirely red, her eyes darting from Alice to me to Jasper with a look of complete horror in her face, like she had committed a huge faux pas. It was unusual for Jasper to return the feeling, however.

"You're so happy." Jasper accused Bella and her eyes widened further, if that was even possible.

"Bella, let Edward explain." Alice led us through to the living room and hauled Jasper through to the kitchen, no doubt berating him for something that wasn't really his fault, when something is innate like that you can't help it.

I sat Bella down and explained as best I could about Jasper and his suspected witchcraft. I threw in some vague information about Alice too, lest she space out and freak Bella out at the same time. Already this evening wasn't what Bella had been expecting, I could see it in her eyes. But at the same time there was an immediate acceptance, she didn't question a word coming out of my mouth and when she finally spoke I could have hugged her...and I did.

"I really like Alice and Jasper."

"I really like _you_." I pressed another kiss onto her temple but her hands fisted into my shirt and she pulled me down so that her lips could push gently against mine.

"I really like you too." She whispered so low I could barely hear her. I wanted her to say it again, I wanted to hear it every day so that I could pinpoint the exact moment like turned to love because I was hyper aware of my own feelings. Her acceptance of Alice and Jasper and all the weirdness that usually sent people running in the opposite direction had edged her even closer to love than she had already been.

"Alright you two, break it up." Jasper handed me a beer when he moseyed back into the room and placed a glass of water in front of Bella. "Alice thought you might like this." He told her, sitting in the seat opposite.

"Perfect."

And that's just about what the evening was. Bella and Alice didn't stop talking the entire night. Not one of us mentioned the baby, all of us unwilling to take any chance that talking about it could jinx it. Bella also held her own against Jasper's sometimes random comments and teasing about her lack of like for the humble potato.

"It's an affront to your hosts, their ancestors probably almost died in the crazy potato famine back in the homeland!" His southern accent had abruptly turned into the worst Irish accent I had ever heard.

"They probably would have died from eating nothing but potatoes, they have little to no nutritional value...for me, it's all about the sweet potato." She had countered, and we watched aghast as he launched into a drunken rendition of Danny Boy that made Bella and I shake with laughter until Alice, in an uncharacteristic move, told him _Jasper, you're from Texas, shut the fuck up_.

"Jasper, I cannot wait to get drunk with you."

Alice had worked her magic on creating a perfect evening, a traditional cottage pie was topped with sweet potato and accompanied by little bundles of carrots, broccoli and asparagus. She had the music set at the perfect volume, the table was set with a runner of gold and deep blood red. She had even bought Bella a little gift which was a surprise, but Bella countered with a hostess gift of her own that I didn't realise she had brought.

"It's just a little thing, to say thanks for having me." She smiled bashfully as Alice unwrapped the tissue paper from around what I thought was some sort of jewellery. "If you don't like it, I understand."

"Don't worry. I already know I love it." Alice reached over to place her hand on top of Bella's and she winked at her in a comedic overly dramatic kind of way.

"What is it?" Jasper asked, his head moving back and forth to get the best angle.

"It's a broach." Alice informed him, finally revealing the pewter looking thing.

"It's a pixie." Bella added with a little frown. "I don't know why I picked it, but I'm glad I did, I've been calling you pixie in my head all night." Alice laughed, they both stood up and hugged each other tightly, like they had lost each other for years but found each other again. "This is so weird."

"You'll get used to that around us." Alice replied.

**A/N: I want to thank everyone for reading this and leaving me reviews, they mean the world.**

**Also, I want to bow down at the feet of my shiny new pre-reader ladyeire3...she has been a great help already :D**

**See you kids on the other side :D  
**


	8. When Edward Wouldn't Put Out

**Disclaimer: I own a fridge full of JD and Coke to place a balm on heartache but I do not own Twilight or anything to do with it.**

**Chapter 8 – Bella**

**When Edward Wouldn't Put Out**

"...it's an important point to note that if we abandon the project at this point the company will incur substantial losses, if you would turn to appendix 8 you will see that..."

The words were just spilling out of my mouth as I stood in front of the meeting table and gestured to the screen behind me with the pointer I held in my hand.

I loved my pointer; it made me feel like a teacher.

I had done so many of these presentations that I was on autopilot, which was a good thing considering there was only one thing in my mind and that was Edward. It was getting boring for the parts of my brain not ruled by my hormones and crotchal region, which would be about 2%.

I was seeing him in, I craned my neck subtly to look at the clock behind me, three hours. In three hours I get to have his hands wrapped around me and my hands in his hair. I couldn't wait. I just had to finish this presentation and then I was homeward bound.

This date had been my responsibility, seeing as he arranged the first one and the dinner at Alice's, if you counted that as a date. I was counting it because it meant that tonight was the third date and I might finally get some naughty touching. He already had an all access pass to my bathing suit area but had thus far been too fixated on taking things slowly to use it. Fact is that Edward is sex on a stick and I wanted every part of him, it took every ounce of willpower to not straddle him every time he was in the vicinity. I was happy to let him set the pace but my god, if he didn't make me orgasm soon I was going to explode.

A lot of the things I thought of for the date were physical activities, but I thought to hell with it. I'm not crazy or reckless, there is no way I would do something that could cause harm to the baby. I had been stuck a little, I admit, but after a quick call to Alice and finding something out about Edward and his early teenage self I finally decided on what we were doing.

Besides, getting the blood pumping might help with Operation Seduce The Last Surviving Gentleman In The Whole of the Land.

I would really have to shorten that.

"In addition, the scrap of existing materials would recoup very little in the way of actual revenue." I was surprised to find I was still talking somewhat coherently when I finally refocused on the presentation I was giving. As far as I could tell there was no drool in the corners of my mouth either.

Score one for me.

I finally wrapped up the meeting, I was boring even myself at the end. I walked out of the meeting room with Angela and she linked her arm through mine, relieving me of the burden of my pile of notes but I wouldn't relinquish my pointer.

She always tried to steal my pointer.

"Hey, no way, get your own, lady!" I nudged her with my hip and we giggled.

"You look far too happy considering you just told them they could lose millions no matter what way they decide to go." I shrugged in a non-committal manner but knew she was on to me.

"You just look happy in general." She appraised me, taking in my usual work hair, a classic high ponytail, and the new outfit Rosalie had ordered with my credit card without my knowledge but for which I was grateful, because who doesn't love a Michael Kors red wool jersey dress when it's delivered to your door by a cute delivery dude? Particularly when it is accompanied by a box containing some kick ass Louboutins.

"Do I? Sorry, I hadn't realised." She narrowed her eyes at me a little, trying to work out the source of my giddy attitude.

"It's the hot doctor, isn't it? Another date?"

"Tonight." I admitted, unable to stop the smile that formed.

"You heading off then?"

"Yup. Just gonna throw this stuff in my office and pick up another folder and I'm out of here for the weekend."

"I won't keep you then. Have fun." She gave my arm a quick squeeze and trotted off to find Ben when we reached my office. I threw the papers down onto my desk, deciding to file them away on Monday and picked up another of the folders I needed to get finished for early next week. I made it to the elevator in no time flat and bounced on the balls of my feet with impatience as I awaited the tiny box of claustrophobia to make its long journey up the building.

"You look like you're in a rush." A voice said beside me and I inwardly cursed my bad luck as I turned to smile politely at Mike. I should be more tolerant of the man, I had no particular issue with him. Except that he found it hard to keep his hands to himself in certain situations. Like the time we went on a date and it was one of the dullest and most drawn out evenings of my life. Apparently, he was unable to read the _this is going nowhere_ signals and made a lunge for me at the end of the night. He could manage to get his hands in a variety of areas in an incredibly limited amount of time, if I hadn't been the one he was groping I would have almost admired the man for his skill.

"Kind of eager to leave the building." I replied, trying to be polite when I wanted to turn and tell him in no uncertain terms that I found speaking to him a complete chore.

"Don't blame you, Friday night and all that." I smiled and nodded, unwilling to be drawn into a conversation, but he wouldn't take the hint. "Date night." He said it in a weird way, like it was a question, as he rocked back on his heels with his hands in his pockets.

"Yup."

"You have a date then?"

"Yup."

"Been seeing him long?"

"Uh, I've known him almost two months now." That was true, it was rounding on two months since that fateful night in the club.

"Exclusive? Because I was wondering if you would like to go out again...with me." He asked a very good question. Not the one about a date, that was a definite no, but about exclusivity. As far as I was concerned I was incredibly _not_ interested in dating anyone else. But, did he feel the same way? He could be seeing other women, but my gut feeling was that he wasn't, that he would have told me because I don't think he had a dishonest bone in his Demi-God body.

"Yes, to the exclusive thing. Sorry Mike, I'm not going to go on a date with you." His smile faded a little but he tried to save face with a nonchalant shrug.

"No problem Bella, just thought I would ask."

There had been a time when I tried to force myself to feel something other than indifference towards Mike. He was a nice guy, he seemed pretty genuine. He had that all American boy next door look nailed, with his blonde hair and blue eyes and cheeks that dimpled when he smiled. But his dimples weren't a patch on Emmett's and those were the only ones I needed to see on a regular basis. So, I resigned myself to the fact that attraction was something that you just couldn't force.

The elevator finally arrived and Mike waved his hand to indicate that I was to go first. As soon as the doors shut my phone started to ring, looking at the display I saw it was Edward but really didn't want to answer with Mike so near. As much as it hurt me to do it I let it go to voicemail but it started to ring again almost immediately.

_You hit me once,_

_I hit you back,_

_You gave a kick,_

_I gave a slap,_

_You smashed a plate over my head,_

_Then I set fire to our bed._

As far as songs go _Kiss With A Fist_ perhaps isn't the best one for the person you are currently dating, but I loved the song and it was my generic tone because I hadn't managed to find the time to find the perfect song to assign to everyone. When I realised he probably wouldn't give up I answered and glanced at Mike's raised eyebrow and pensive face.

"Hey."

"Hi, how are you today Bella?"

"I'm good, and you?"

"I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight." His voice snaked out of my phone and around my head, making it fuzzy. I leaned back on the wall of the elevator and allowed myself a mini swoon. "I was wondering if you were going to let me know where we are going?"

"Um..." I pretended to think about it for a second. "Nope." I laughed.

"At least tell me the dress code? I don't want to turn up in a tuxedo when I should be wearing overalls."

"Trust me honey, I will never take you anywhere that requires overalls." I giggled as I made the promise.

"That's a shame." He laughed with me.

"It's casual, like the zoo, but you'll need to be slightly warmer because we'll be inside but it'll be colder than the outside." I hoped that I had managed to not give too many clues but he seemed pretty confused by how oblique I was being.

"Right. Dress casual but warmer because inside is colder than outside?"

"Yes." I nodded my head even though he couldn't see me. The elevator doors pinged open and Mike walked along side me when I walked towards my car.

"You're lucky I'm tired and too excited about seeing you tonight, otherwise I would totally work out your confusing clue."

"It wasn't meant to be a clue, it was meant to be a recommendation on clothing."

"If I wear too little and get too cold do you promise to warm me up?"

Hell. Yes.

"I think that could be arranged." I flirted, feeling the blush creep across the apples of my cheeks at the thought of warming Edward up. I think the first rule is to remove all clothing.

"I'll see you tonight then, wearing an ill advised outfit." His voice dropped to just above a whisper and deepened, making it slightly gritty and I was glad I was by my car because my knees wobbled a tad at the sound of him.

"See you tonight." I croaked and caught his chuckle before I hung up.

I let loose a deep sigh of giddiness and gave Mike a quick salute of goodbye as he stared at me until I tore out of the parking garage with my wheels spinning and rubber burning in my haste to get home and get ready.

* * *

I couldn't read Edward's face when I parked in front of Skate King after almost 40 minutes in the car. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether he was impressed or annoyed. It frustrated me slightly that I couldn't read him, it served to remind me that we really didn't know each other that well yet. I knew I just had to give it some time and I would be able to interpret the expressions that flitted across his handsome visage. I bit down on my lip nervously, chewing it as I awaited some sort of response.

I turned off the car and we sat in silence for a moment, my bottom lip still being chewed to within an inch of its life. Edward's hand stretched across the space between us, his thumb brushing across my mouth and pulling my lip from between my teeth.

"I'll be wanting to do that to it myself later, don't wear it out." His eyes were trained forward on the sign on the front of the building. "You've already been conspiring with Alice and you've only known her a few days."

"If I admit to that will you tell me what you're thinking?" He started a little and whipped his head around to look at me.

"Bella, I'm sorry, I'm happy. Whenever I am with you, I am happy." He grazed my cheekbone with the back of his hand before continuing. "I just wondered if my sister had a hand in this, that's all."

"Well, in the spirit of full disclosure," Mimicking his words from the zoo I continued. "yes, but the idea was all mine, I just ran it past her. I wanted to do something I knew you would enjoy."

It was true I had managed to have a flash of inspiration and before I had the chance to call Alice and ask her about it she had called me. She had told me it was a fantastic idea, that Edward hadn't been skating since his teens and that he would be able to impress me on the ice. This was before I had said anything more than hello to the woman. She was amazing.

There was a selfishness with regards to the ice skating I had to admit. I hadn't been in years either. Emmett and I used to go practically every day in winter when we were growing up but it was something that had fallen to the wayside as we matured and moved on with our lives.

I was a little disappointed he wasn't as excited about this as I had been about the zoo but as I was studying his face I saw something spark and grow at the back of his eyes, something akin to excitement and I knew that as soon as the skates were on we would be having a great time.

"I have something for you." I told him, hopping out of the car and grabbing a couple of bags from the trunk. He finally started to move and exited the car, joining me at the back and looking curious.

"Whatcha got there, Swan?"

"Why, your old skates, Cullen." I smirked, handing him the bag Alice had dropped off the night before.

"No way!" He bounced a little and a smile finally appeared as he pulled the skates out and looked at them in wonder. "I thought these had been lost when my parents moved years ago. Feel, they're sharp." He pushed the edge towards me gently in invitation to run my fingers along the edges but I already knew they were pretty sharp and sharp edges plus me absolutely do not mix.

"Alice had them sharpened for you."

"Of course she did. Did she tell you about my teenage years?"

"Only a little bit, Ice Princess." I sniggered.

"It's a perfectly valid thing for a teenage boy to want to do."

"Yes, absolutely." I controlled my sniggering by clamping my lips together tightly and looked at him seriously. His eyes narrowed in good humour before he kissed my tense mouth and threw his arm around my shoulder to guide us into the arena.

I was eager to show off but when you haven't skated in almost ten years and were never actually very good at it in the first place it's a difficult task to complete. I teetered on the edge of staying balanced and lurching about like an epileptic giraffe. Thankfully Edward had retained his grace on the ice and helped me stay upright with his arm wrapped around my waist and his fingers clamped securely onto my hip to hold me tight to his side.

"Why did you give up skating?"

"I, uh, I dropped my partner and she cracked her head open on the ice. She was lying there unconscious, blood spilling onto the ice and I felt helpless. I couldn't do anything to help her, it made me realise that I wanted to be a doctor." He told me honestly, his eyes avoiding mine from the obvious guilt he still felt about dropping her.

"When I was little, I thought that when someone said their head was cracked open they meant that their skull had literally parted and that you would be able to see their brain, it freaked me out and made me cry." His fingers tightened slightly on my hip as he laughed.

We did circuits on the rink, our bodies pressed tightly together and our mouths rarely shut from the talking we did. We talked of nothing and everything all at once. He touched on the issue of my mother but I was unwilling to be drawn, not wanting to end up in a puddle of tears in the middle of the ice. It was too early for that conversation, for that raw nerve to be uncovered. I knew it would be in time, but I wanted our date to be free of unhealed wounds and confessions of abandonment issues.

I learned about his childhood desire to be a professional skater, about how his parents indulged their only son in his single minded pursuit. He told me that they were proud of him, no matter what he did, so long as he put in 100% effort. They would be in the audience with Alice sitting on their laps to get a better view because she was always tiny for her age, they would all cheer and roar their support louder than anyone else in the crowd. His room had been adorned with the trophies he and his partner Kate had won, and until that fateful day when he had come across a rough spot of ice which made him lose his balance and, ultimately, the girl he held above his head, he thought of his life being nothing else.

"You love being a doctor though, right? I mean, you wouldn't change it?"

"Not a second. Obviously I would have rather not given Kate concussion, eight stitches and the need to find a new partner, but it worked out for the best. She got married last year to the guy she replaced me with." He smiled with genuine happiness for her and I skated us to the edge of the rink to push up against him and kiss him because he was such a lovely man.

"What was that for?" He breathed into my hair once I had finished my assault on his mouth.

"For being you." I gazed up at him adoringly, which is possibly a little bit pathetic but he astounded me in several ways, not least his crazy hair, his piercing eyes and his warmth whenever he was near me. He looked back at me, his eyes darkening slightly before he began his own assault on my mouth, his tongue pressing into my mouth as I groaned when he pulled my body impossibly closer to his. I lost myself in his taste and in his strength, my hands fisting his shirt to pull myself closer up to his mouth. It was only when a group of teens skated past whistling at us that we remembered where we were. It was lucky there weren't any actual children about or there would have been tears and nightmares before bedtime.

With sheepish smiles we did another couple of circuits to maintain some semblance of decorum when in reality, on my side anyway, the lure of some backseat canoodling was almost too good to overlook. It had been years since I fooled around in the back seat of a car but Edward made me feel so fluttery that it was like being a teenager all over again.

We stumbled out of the rink, our hands clasped and drunk on each other's company. He pressed me up against my car, his mouth on mine, his hands tangled in my hair. His mouth dropped to my neck, his firm yet gentle nips being soothed by his skilled tongue as my head dropped back and a groan echoed around the dark and empty car park. I hooked my leg up and around his hip making him pause infinitesimally before his head dropped to my shoulder and he kissed the skin available to him thanks to the slash detailing on my gray Julien MacDonald sweater. The kisses were gentle, less rushed and I knew he was calming us both but reluctant to stop touching my skin with his lips.

My heart was beating a mile a minute, I was sure it was about to burst out of my chest like some sort of parody of Alien. Edward was right to calm us down, another couple of minutes and I would have shamelessly been humping his leg desperate for release.

"Bella." He whispered against my shoulder, he had stopped kissing me, instead choosing to rest his forehead heavily on me as his breathing returned to normal. "I don't understand how simply kissing you sets my body on fire."

"You'll find no explanation here, I'm still ablaze." I informed him, burrowing my nose into his hair to smell his unique scent and press a kiss against it. His smell was pretty indescribable, it was like the finest perfumery had worked magic and produced a scent that was uniquely created to attract me. Whenever I caught a hint of it I wanted to inhale without pause, if I could I would inhale until I passed out. It was layer upon layer of my favourite smells, it was the smell of an oily engine, it was freshly soaped skin, it was musk so subtle yet so potent, it was just cut grass and newly bloomed flowers.

It was everything to me, just as he was beginning to be.

The drive back to Edward's was almost completely silent except for the sound of me slapping his hand away as it trailed from tracing lazy circles on my upturned palm to the tops of my arms, which made me lose focus and close my eyes. Closing your eyes as you drive is never advised and I had to send him to his side of the car so that I could get us home without crashing.

There was a heavy atmosphere when I pulled up in front of Edward's apartment building. There were unasked questions and passionate answers swirling around us, threatening to drown us if we stayed where we were for a little while longer.

"I'm not going to invite you in." He muttered quietly. I bit back the sting of rejection, knowing that wasn't his intent. "I want to, God, I really fucking want to." His head fell back and he stared blankly at the lining above him, his jaw clenching and unclenching like he was fighting an internal battle. "This is only our second date..."

"Third!" I interrupted, making him chuckle.

"Second, the dinner with Alice and Jasper doesn't count."

"Yes it does, if we say it does then it does." I pouted, a little desperately, when he sighed and shook his head. I caught myself on the edge of petulance and decided to make it easier on him. "That's alright, I didn't want to come up anyway."

"Yes, you did." He caught my lie with a smirk and an answer that would have bordered on arrogance had anyone else said it, but he merely stated it as fact. "And I want you to." He stretched over and kissed my temple. "Not tonight."

He was being so restrained, so concerned with doing things "right". I admired it and detested it all at the same time. My head was flicking through any response that could change the outcome, which could see me being invited up and finally getting the release that I craved. But I thought being forthright and telling him I wanted him inside me, that I wanted to touch and kiss and lick and suck every part of him would quite possibly tear him in half, so I let him go.

"Goodnight." I smiled, allowing myself a final tease of his hair before he climbed out and stood where he was until I could no longer see him in any of my mirrors.

Fuck my stupidly old fashioned baby daddy.

I wish I could.

* * *

"Your vagina is going to be ruined."

"Don't call it a vagina...it seems so impersonal."

"It's going to be ruined no matter what you call it, sweets."

"There are things I can do to ensure it isn't ruined." I used asshole air quotations on the word ruined. Rosalie was terrifying me right now and I was beginning to wish that I hadn't said yes to her coming round while Emmett was off doing something team related.

"I read it in one of the books Emmett bought you. You might want to let Edward use it as much as possible before it becomes a wizard's sleeve."

"Oh, shut the fuck up Rosalie, I swear to God that I am going to kick your ass if you don't just shut up!"

"What date are you on now? I know he's a gentleman and all that but seriously, let him use it."

I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed deeply. Rosalie had been harping on about sex for the last twenty minutes and she was preaching to the choir. Edward could use it all he wanted, and I knew he did want to, but he so far wasn't taking advantage and I was aching for him. I should have sensed the danger immediately but I let Rosalie talk, mainly because I was trying to distract myself with finishing a cash budget for a department at work.

"I appreciate your concern for my lady parts, but I don't feel exactly comfortable discussing it."

"You're getting snippy, Bella, and I know exactly why." She smirked at me with a look of such superiority on her face that I wanted to stick my tongue out at her. Of course she knew why I was snippy, she knew me too well. "Also, aren't Emmett and I basically your family? So, when do we get to meet Mr Handsome Doctor Man?"

"Emmett has already met him." I mumbled.

"Pinning Edward to a wall isn't exactly meeting someone. Plus, I want to meet this sister that you are so in love with all of a sudden."

"Rose, you are going to adore her too, it's almost impossible not to." I promised her.

"So, does Edward have some sort of special power too?" I rolled my eyes at her. I tell her everything, so of course I mentioned vaguely that Alice sees things sometimes and that Jasper feels things. She had snorted at me and informed me in a voice designed to deal with the IQ challenged that they were two of the senses that every person has.

"Bionic hair." I retort, managing to silence her for a second as she thinks it over.

"Bella, can I please meet the man who implanted his seed in your womb and his superhero family?"

"You are such an asshole." I huff, slamming my laptop shut and stomping to the kitchen to forage for some food to shove in her mouth to keep her quiet. I had no idea why she was such a contentious mood but I was going to get to the bottom of it.

I opened a bottle of wine and filled a large glass almost to the brim before throwing some chicken in the oven and stomping back to her. She swiped it from me and took a huge gulp before looking up at me with big eyes full of the knowledge that she was being a bitch.

"Spill it." I ordered, none too sympathetically.

"I'm getting pressure from my parent's to invite someone to the wedding that I don't want to, and neither side will back down." She sipped some more wine and pursed her lips. "Do you remember me telling you about Royce?"

Did I remember when my best friend told me about the guy her family had pushed her into dating, who had then subjected her to systematic physical and mental abuse? Yes, I most certainly did. I nodded and waited for her to continue.

"Because his parent's are partners in my Dad's firm I apparently can't neglect to invite them."

"That's bullshit, it's your wedding."

"I wouldn't even mind inviting them, if it was just them. But I have to invite Royce and his trophy wife with the IQ of a retarded pig." She sighed.

"You don't have to invite anyone you don't want to, Rose."

"He's being a complete asshole, if I don't invite Royce then he will no longer be paying for the wedding. When I reminded him that I didn't actually need his financial help he acted like I had mortally wounded him. Tradition is such bullshit."

"Rosalie, he cannot be at your wedding. I would kill him with your wedding cake knife. Have you told Emmett?"

"I told E' some stuff, but skimmed over a lot. Jesus, could you imagine? I'd be saying my vows through a shitty telephone and separated from the love of my life by three inch thick Perspex surrounded by criminals in orange jumpsuits."

"Yeah, that would definitely happen."

"Yes, but you know what definitely isn't happening? Royce fucking King coming to my wedding. Even if it means my parents aren't there." She clenched her jaw, jutting out her chin and I saw that even just saying the words hurt her. I couldn't imagine what the actual act would do to her if it transpired.

"I won't let that happen, Rose." I took her hand and shuffled closer to her to offer what comfort I could.

"Stop sniffing my wine, freak." We laughed together and moved on to happier topics for her but not so happy for me, she wouldn't let the Edward subject drop until I finally agreed to arrange for a proper meeting for all the people who knew about the baby from both sides.

But Royce King stayed on my mind.

If I had to track the man down and do some quality violence on Rosalie's behalf so be it. He would not be at her wedding.

**A/N: Thanks again to my awesome pre-reader **** ladyeire3 and all of you who indulge me this endeavour and those of you who leave me reviews, it is appreciated hugely.**

**I'll see you next chapter :D **


	9. When Bella Rounds the Bases

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything Twilight but I do own a Marvin the Martian bag that claims to be very very angry.**

**Chapter 9 – Edward**

**When Bella Rounds the Bases**

Masturbation is my friend. I was doing it pretty much every moment I was alone. When I woke up in the morning my hand was already on my dick.

It was bordering on unhealthy.

Hell, it was way past unhealthy and sprinting into therapy territory.

I ached for Bella, for her touches and kisses and unintentional eye fucking. Everything about her turned me on and sent me into a heightened state of arousal. It was almost painful.

But I was willing to take the pain because it was juxtaposed with the absolute joy of being in her company and being the person she was choosing to spend her time with.

Why she had chosen me I would never fathom, obviously impregnating her was a factor but even before that when we met that night in the club I don't what had set me apart from any other man in there. A long line of guys had been building up their courage to speak to her and had eyed me with total hatred when I bought her a drink and she flicked her long dark hair over her shoulder, exposing the soft white skin of her neck as she laughed at some lame comment I had made.

She had obviously been a fan of my bad jokes and stuttering attempts at conversation.

Our ice skating date had started rocky because I am an asshole. Sitting outside the rink all of my old desires had flooded back and I was left with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, still feeling the guilt of dropping Kate, in more ways than one, all those years ago. Things had since worked out for the better for both of us, but I could never quite shake that guilty feeling and the thought that I had quit.

I wasn't a quitter and I certainly was not brought up to be a quitter. The children of Carlisle Cullen did not quit. Failure was not an option. Yet I dropped skating like a hot brick once I realised that I wanted to be a doctor. I think that was why my Dad hadn't gone completely fucking postal, I was going to be following in his footsteps. I didn't tell him then that it was never my intention to be a surgeon like him. That painful conversation came much later.

Once I realised Bella was thinking that I wasn't ecstatic with the date I shook my idiotic head and focused on her for the rest of the night. The way she was pinned tight to my side by my own hand, the girl is an accident waiting to happen, was one of the highlights, much like the making out against her car like we were teenagers.

This is why I was jacking off in the shower only minutes after she drove away.

I finally achieved my release under the warm rain of water and let the steam build in the room, my forehead resting against the cool tile as I tried to bring my breathing under control.

I wasn't going to be able to hold out much longer.

She had no idea how much I wanted her again, to feel her body flush against mine without the barriers of clothing, to be between her legs and to lose myself in the sensation of her surrounding me. I groaned and my dick twitched again but thankfully didn't demand attention again so soon. I've never been so happy for the refractory period in my life, without it I'd have cock burn.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and padded through to my room. It was sparse, I'm a guy who doesn't really give a shit about decoration. Whatever design flair was evident in my apartment was there because my Mom had insisted she decorate before I move in. I placed a few restrictions on her but beyond that she had free reign and because of this I lived in a place with walls painted colours like _wheat_ and _barley_. She thought it made it warm, but I had seen warmth in the decoration of Bella's house and all my place said to me was that Mom didn't really know me well enough, probably due to my own pulling away from them over the past few years to stand on my own two feet.

My answering machine blinked at me when I passed so I pressed the button and listened while I dried off.

"Hi honey." Think of the devil. "Your Father and I were talking and we realised that we haven't seen you for a while. I know that work is hard, but you are past due a visit to the homestead and some maternal TLC. Give us a call back darling, we miss you."

World's Worst Son Award goes to...

It had been too long since I saw my parents and I really did want to make the twenty minute drive to see them and indulge in some of my Mom's oatmeal raisin cookies. My mouth salivated at the thought of them alone. I don't know what she puts in them but they are addictive.

There was a risk involved in seeing them. My Mom has some sort of supernatural sense when something major is going on in my life, I know she would pick up on the baby in some way or another in an instant. If I were to visit them I would need a buffer. Once again I would need my little sister.

X~X~X

"Please Alice." I wasn't above begging, if I was in front of her right now I wouldn't feel any hesitation in dropping to my knees and clasping her hands in mine, giving her the look she patented as a child that I can't pull off half as well.

"This has got to be worth something." She's evil.

"I have nothing to offer, and you know that."

"Bella."

"You've met her already, and from the sounds of it you talk to her more than I do." I sniped, a little put out at the speed with which Alice had made Bella a friend.

"Don't be snarky, Edward, otherwise it's a definite no."

"Please?" I drew the word out and rolled my eyes at myself.

"I want you to meet her people."

"What?" I heard Jasper ask the same question with the same tone in the background.

"You need to get to know her people, her friends who are her family, because if it all goes well you'll be in their lives for, well, life."

"Slow down there Alice, we've just started dating."

"You can lie to yourself, but don't you dare lie to _me_ big brother." We were both silent for a beat before a sigh from my end let her know I was submitting.

"Fine."

"Did you know it's her birthday in just over a week?"

"No, how do you?"

"I asked her, to put it in my planner." She informed me in a voice designed precisely to make me feel deficient.

"Alice, I'm growing tired of this conversation now, will you and Jasper come to Mom and Dad's with me or not?" There was rushed whispering at the other end of the phone and I started hitting the back of my head against the pillow under it in frustration. "Yes or No?"

"Fine, yes, we will. But you owe us."

I hung up and smacked my head back into the pillow again. It never used to be like this, it never used to be a military operation of underhanded deals when arranging to visit our parents, but in the years since our fairly idyllic childhoods something had shifted in Dad and it made him difficult to be around. We loved him, he loved us, but there was a perpetual look of disappointment he wore whenever he saw us that made us not want to be around him, which made things worse of course. Mom tried to compensate, but she knew that as we pulled away from him we had to pull away from her too, as much as it killed all of us.

X~X~X

Alice and Jasper were already at the house when my taxi pulled up. I wasn't late on purpose, my shift had run over and I had called Bella after. We talked for half an hour, she was upset about some guy called Royce but I couldn't spend as much time as I would have liked on the subject because she changed it abruptly. I could feel my chest tightening and my fists clenching when she talked, but she quickly explained he was something to do with Rosalie, who sounded terrifying, and her wedding. I rolled my neck to try to release some of the tension that had settled there when I thought she was actually talking to me about some other guy.

I made a mental note to make the exclusive talk with her happen pretty fucking quickly. I had assumed that we were, but she perhaps wasn't clear on the issue. The emotions that assaulted me just thinking about her with some other guy frightened me because it made me aware that I would be capable of murder. It made me sick too, that someone else could realise that her hip was perfectly sized for their hand to fit around.

The tension came back and I had to walk into my parent's house in need of some sort of outlet for it.

Not the best start.

My Mom greeted me as soon as I passed the threshold with a hug, her warmth going some way to releasing me from my thunderous mood. Her hands paused on my back, feeling the tension, before gripping my shoulders and pushing me away to appraise me. I tried to smooth my face, to make it free of any emotion other than happiness at seeing her but she saw it at once.

"What's wrong?" She asked in a whisper, conscious that my Dad would be aware of my presence soon and we wouldn't get a chance to talk.

"Rough shift at work." I half lied, because it had been a beast. There had been more failures than successes and that left a mark on a person's psyche, that's why I had to call Bella as soon as I was done. I had wanted her voice to soothe me, but our conversation had done anything but.

"I'm sorry." She hugged me again, not buying a word of it but knowing that I needed some sort of comfort. "Alice and Jasper are in the kitchen with your Dad." She led the way after giving me another searching look, one of the ones Moms perfect when you are little and you think can see right down to your soul.

Jasper looked like a rabbit trapped in headlights when I walked into the kitchen. Dad was obviously asking either an inappropriate or awkward question. Alice laughed and I saw immediately that it was fake because her nose didn't do that crinkle thing.

"Don't be silly Dad, Jasper is more than capable of providing for me, not that I need it, because he's a _successful_ writer and not a _beatnik_, as you so charmingly phrased it."

Dad stood up and greeted me with a handshake and a nod, the soft odour of whiskey drifted across the space between us and I understood what the evening held in store for us. We were going to be subjected to the _what are you doing with your life?_ line of questioning. It didn't matter that I was rounding on thirty and nearing the end of my residency, that Alice had a financially and personally rewarding livelihood in her boutique and that Jasper was not only a published writer with a three book deal but had been a practicing lawyer up until that point.

If you add that on top of the trust funds that Alice and I had thanks to Nana and Gramps Cullen then we were downright spoiled by life.

Most of the evening passed in the same vein. Dad continued to drink whiskey, Scottish, while Jasper and I guzzled glass after glass of Jack. I kept pretty quiet, preferring to listen as Alice ran argumentative circles around our increasingly wasted Father. For someone who appears a complete ditz she is actually pretty damn clever. When I hit eighteen I had to do an IQ test, when I say had to I mean I was pretty much forced to sit it because he insisted. Then when Alice hit eighteen she had to do it too. He took great pleasure in telling me that she had a higher IQ than I did, expecting it to cause some sort of petty rift between us, but it just made me proud of her.

Sometimes I tried to pinpoint when this monumental change in him had happened. I think it was around my eighteenth birthday, but I could never be sure. In my head it seemed he went to bed one night as the loving and supportive father he had always been and woke up changed, he woke up bitter. To his credit he mainly chose to focus this on me and I was happy to let him so long as Alice came away relatively unscathed, but she saw it, she resented it and as a result she began to resent him.

"So, Edward, what's new in your life?" Dad rounded on me as I stuffed another cookie into my mouth.

"Not much, don't have much time for anything except work really." I don't lie a lot, I don't like liars, so I reasoned this was merely an omission of information rather than a flat out lie.

"I can still make you a surgeon." This was a well worn argument.

"I don't want to be a surgeon, and I don't want your help."

"Don't be proud, the Cullen name can open doors for you."

"I don't want doors to open for me, I want to be the one to open them for myself." I retorted, only to be ignored once again.

"You are being pig headed, boy." I bristled at being called boy but before I could react I felt a hand tugging on my arm to distract me.

"I'm going back into law." Jasper slurred in a move to change the subject. He must have felt the grateful I was projecting at him because he winked quickly and braced himself for the onslaught of opinions Carlisle Cullen held on lawyers. Jasper was usually drunk when we were here, it was the only way he could cope with the conflict. He never told me explicitly what he felt coming from my parents but I knew it took him a couple of days to recuperate after the visits.

X~X~X

"Have you and Bella had sex again yet?" Jasper asked me in a deceptively innocent voice. I eyed him suspiciously and gulped down my drink before pouring out a new one. We had managed to escape from my Father fully intact and to celebrate we decided to continue boozing.

"You tell me." I replied. He pretended to concentrate on me but Alice slapped his arm lightly and laughed, her nose crinkle finally making an appearance.

"Oh please, even I can feel the pent up sexual frustration rolling off Edward. Which totally skeeves me out, FYI." She had abandoned her notion of a "proper grown up woman's drink" to take shots with us, leaving her with a slightly pink face and an even more pronounced inability to sit still.

"It isn't something I'm doing on purpose." I retort, unable to stop the impulse to stick my tongue out at her.

"Well, it is, you made the conscious decision to not sleep with the poor girl."

"Poor girl?"

"You have no idea." She cryptically replied, leaving me thinking about how much, exactly, do they talk about when I'm not around.

"Aren't you a little weirded out?" Jasper drew my attention back and I was nonplussed.

"About what?"

"Well, your kid is in there. So when you have sex your dick is gonna be, like, right _there_."

"There's all sorts of wrong in that statement."

"Exactly! It is all sorts of wrong. Don't you worry that it'll be a little like…?" He reached over and started poking me in the forehead with his index finger. It really fucking hurt.

"_Jesus_!" I backed away.

"Jasper Whitlock!" Alice was sitting staring at him shocked. I probably had the same expression on my face, not once had I thought about it but now that Jasper had put it in my mind I knew I wouldn't be able to get it out of my head. "Edward, please be rational and _do not_ listen to my fucktard of a husband."

"Um, but, I don't want to hit my kid on the head with my dick." My eyes widened and I shook my head as Jasper copied my movements. Alice's head dropped down into her hands and she shook it slowly at us both.

"Right, well, unless you're King Dong and Bella's cervix is the Holland Tunnel I don't think you have to worry about it. _You are a_ _doctor_, for Christ's sake."

X~X~X

Sun tried to force its way through my eyelids seconds before the word fell away from me and I crashed down, my head cracking on something hard and unforgiving.

This most definitely isn't my bed.

"Edward?" The sweetest voice broke through my hangover and I cracked open one eye, wincing against the bright light and barely able to focus on the face haloed by brown hair above me.

"Morning." I croaked, my hand rubbing at the spot that had cracked off what I know knew to be the tiling in Bella's vestibule.

"Um, morning. So, whatcha doin'?" She asked me in a sing-song voice, barely able to keep the amusement from seeping into her tone.

"I don't know." I told her honestly, trying valiantly to stop my brain from exploding as I tried to right myself and stand up. "The last thing I remember is doing shots with Alice and Jasper to try to forget about seeing my father." I finally managed to open both eyes and focus on her properly. She was looking beautiful, from the tip of her quiff to the soles of her shoes, she was impeccably put together and obviously on her way to work. A small frown ghosted over her face at the mention of needing to get drunk to get over my father and I remembered that she wasn't aware of the shitty relationship we had with him.

"I thought, I mean, from what you said before he seemed like a good guy."

"I have two fathers, Bella, the one who supported and loved me through childhood and the one who I have to deal with in the present day."

"Oh." Her arms slipped around my body underneath my shoulders and she pulled me into a hug that told me everything I needed to know. She would never push for the details and she would wait patiently for the stories to come, because I would do the same for her with her Mom. I would wait my entire life to earn her favour. "Edward?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry, but you need to throw your ass in the shower." She pulled back and grinned up at me, her hands settling at my waist. I lifted my arm and sniffed, immediately recoiling from the smell of stale alcohol and sleep sweat. She laughed at me, her fresh minty breath teasing me and igniting the desire to kiss her. "I need to go to work."

"I guess I'll head home." I yawned, turning my head to make sure my morning breath didn't wilt her impressively stacked hair.

"Why don't you have a sleep and shower here?"

"You're sure?" I wanted nothing more to sink into her bed again and I'm sure she saw it in my face because she smirked.

"I trust you." She kissed the corner of my mouth, pulled her body away from mine and gave me a little wave. The front door had been left open for me, I moved into the doorway and leaned against the frame to watch her walk to her car and drive off. I couldn't help the thought that it seemed natural. I could see myself waving Bella off to work every morning.

It was strange being in Bella's house without her being here. I felt like an intruder once I closed the big front door behind me and walked through the silence. As always I looked at the pictures as I passed, my mind making up stories behind the moment captured on film. I wondered if any had been her boyfriend. I wondered if any had been someone she handed her firsts to. Her first kiss, her first grope, her first orgasm, her first time, her first love. Any of the guys in these pictures could have been the recipient of any of those firsts and it made me want to smash them into a million pieces because I would give anything to have been one of her firsts.

I sprinted up the stairs, away from the photographs and the urge to destroy them. My head was throbbing in time to my heart beat. For the first time since I had known Bella I wasn't desperate to find myself alone to jack off. I was too hungover to masturbate. A sad state of affairs.

Besides, it would be majorly creepy of me to stroke my dick and come all over her shower.

I was more than a little happy that she trusted me enough to be alone in her house. It meant more to me than she could have imagined because I was fiercely private and would never dream of leaving someone alone in my apartment. Even when my Mom was decorating I made sure I was there at almost all times and my most personal of possessions were locked away. I don't know what triggered my trust issues but they were most definitely there.

The thought of leaving Bella in my place alone didn't fill me with the same dread that I felt when I thought of someone else in there, because there was a level of intrinsic trust that had formed. I had left Irina alone in my apartment once, she and I met in college and I had thought I could trust her, only to come home to her rifling through my closet and reading the journals I had been keeping since I was nine. She was already up to when I was seventeen when I found her, she had obviously been reading them for a long time prior. The irony being that she merely had to ask and I would have told her almost anything. Our relationship disintegrated soon after that.

Bella's shower was one of the fancy ones with a hundred different buttons and levers that all did something different and you needed to be a safe cracker to figure out how to use it correctly. After fiddling with some levers I finally managed to get water spraying down. I finger brushed my teeth and gargled with some mouthwash as steam filled the room quickly and I stripped even quicker than that, stepping under the cleansing water I allowed myself to succumb to my hangover.

Stupid Jasper and his drinking games. No one can say how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood four times after drinking like we did.

What the fuck is a woodchuck anyway?

I washed my hair with her shampoo, the honey and oat smell making my stomach churn happily as it had before. Then I smothered my hair in her conditioner just for shits and giggles, leaving it in as I decided against using the white puff thing to clean my body and poured some lemon body wash into my hands and soaping myself up, deliberately avoiding any untoward thoughts because I knew how wrong it was to jack off in here.

I don't know how long I stayed in the shower but by the time I worked out how to switch it off again and step out of the cubicle the room was thick with swirling steam. My head had cleared a little and an almost overwhelming tiredness threatened to consume me. I had no idea how much sleep I had managed to get but whatever the amount was it was apparently propped up against Bella's front door and that makes a man's muscles ache.

I had no clean clothes and I really did not want to rifle through Bella's drawers to retrieve something to wear. Most likely I'd only find flimsy girl nightwear and I wasn't the kind of guy to try on his girlfriend's underwear. That thought reminded me that I still wanted to talk to Bella about the exclusive part of our relationship. I really wanted to be able to call her my girlfriend and be sure that she was actually mine, in a non-caveman sense.

_Who are you trying to kid?_

My subconscious scoffed at me but I ignored it and tried to convince myself that by tucking myself into her bed naked was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

The combination of Bella's smells surrounding me made me wish she was here with me, wrapped up in my arms and pressed up against my body. Her bed smelled sexy, smelled of her without any artificial scents, as awesome as they may be on her skin. The sheets were cool on my shower heated skin and I soon fell into a deep sleep with her scent in my nose.

X~X~X

Soft skin brushed against mine, making me leave the haze of the dream world and become vaguely aware that the world wasn't actually made of liquorice and bubble wrap. My fingers automatically curled around the soft skin being offered to them, the unconscious need to touch was too powerful to resist. A body pressed against mine, scraps of fabric scratched against my skin and I pulled it closer to me. Fingers that didn't belong to me came to rest on my chest and hair undulated softly under my nose in the rhythm of my breath.

"Hi." She whispered when I kissed her head with a happy little groan.

"Have I slept all day?" I asked through a yawn. I did not feel rested at all.

"I skipped out of work early." She admitted quietly. "I couldn't concentrate when I knew you were in my bed."

"I'm naked." I stupidly stated.

"I noticed." She giggled against my bare chest. "What were you dreaming about?"

"Liquorice."

"Is that some sort of fetish?"

"What do you mean?" I looked down at her amused face until she quirked an eyebrow and nodded her head towards my quite obvious erection. My head thumped back on the pillow and I closed my eyes. "That's because I'm in your bed." I lifted the quilt quickly and let it settle back down. "And you are almost completely naked."

She was trying to kill me. She was wearing matching bra and panties in a deep blue colour that made her skin look luminescent. My fingers tightened around her hip when she pushed her body into mine.

"Yeah, about that…well, I'm not going to apologise." She sniggered at me.

"Well, I'm not going to do anything about it." I sniggered back at her, refusing to allow my third date rule to be thrown to the side. Even though I wanted to throw it to the side, beat it into a billion pieces with a baseball bat, melt it down with the heat from the sun, flip it off and call it a motherfucker.

"Really?" Her hands strayed dangerously low, my stomach tensed at her light touch while my mind almost ripped in half trying to decide whether to stop her or let her have at it. Her fingers curled around the shaft of my dick and I had to use every ounce of willpower I still possessed to no thrust into her touch.

"Bella." My tone was warning but my hands had decided to take a holiday from the control of my brain and cupped her breasts, running my thumbs across her nipples over the fabric. "You're leading me astray." I groaned. Her fingers tensed around me before beginning a teasingly slow ascent.

"You said we can't have sex, but we aren't even rounding the bases. You've gotta relent on the bases." She kissed my chest, punctuating her well reasoned argument. "There's still a couple to go before we can slide in for home again. We can have a lot of fun with 2nd and 3rd." Her hand twisted over the head of my dick before travelling back down to the base, her body stretching up until her face was level with me and her mouth covered mine before I could answer.

My mouth opened automatically and my tongue sought hers immediately, my breathing was heavy because her hand was still moving. Up, twist and down. My hips weren't controlled by me anymore, they were thrusting into her grip and I felt her smile against my lips before she sat up and let me go.

My jaw dropped.

"What?" She smirked.

"You started it, you'll finish it."

"So, you agree that there's a whole load of fun to be had with the bases?"

"Yes." I sat up, drinking in the smugness of her smile and the desire in her eyes. I leaned toward her until I was on my hands and knees, my body looming over hers and I continued forward until she was forced back by my actions. She was finally on her back before my mouth dropped to her skin, trailing teasing kisses across her collar bone and following the line of her bra. I brought my lips to her ear. "It has been years since I've had a dry hump." I whispered and she laughed, loud and booming it bounced off every corner of the room.

"Same."

"Take off your bra."

"No please?"

"Do it." I told her, backing off and allowing her room to move. Her hands shook and I revelled in the change. It fascinated me how she could be so confident and self assured to take me in hand and negotiate what she wanted sexually, yet when it came down to exposing herself to me there was hesitance and a shyness that contradicted her actions of only moments ago.

"I quite like you commanding." She smiled, unhooking the bra and tossing it aside no longer shy. My hands cupped her breasts, ever since I touched my first pair of boobs it fascinated me how heavy they felt in my hands.

"I like watching you orgasm." I replied, remembering her face as she writhed and came undone above and below me. My fingers rolled her nipples and her back arched to push them into my hands. "I've been fantasising about being inside you again." My mouth descended and pulled her right nipple into my mouths, holding it gently between my teeth and my tongue flicking back and forth across it until she moaned and pushed her chest harder into my face.

"You don't know how crazy you make me." She groaned, her hands delving into my hair as I pulled her left nipple into my mouth and repeated the process, my other hand massaging her left breast.

"There's a way I can check." I said against the skin that lived in the valley between her breasts. My hand disappeared under the elastic of her panties, my fingers dancing across her slit and getting covered in her silky moisture immediately. I pushed a finger inside her, making her hands clench tighter in my hair causing me to nip at her skin in a growl as fresh blood made its way to my dick.

"Oh god." She groaned as I pushed a second finger inside her, feeling her tighten around me made me remember how tight she felt when I was inside her, how she had clenched and pulsed and felt like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life.

"Take your panties off." I pulled my fingers out, letting them slide up to her clit and circling it before removing my hand completely and wrapping my hand around my painfully hard cock, stroking myself as I watched her wriggle her hips and peel off the blue fabric to reveal herself completely to me. "You're so fucking beautiful." Her skin flushed at the compliment and a small smile appeared.

I had to kiss that smile.

We collided in an explosion of pent up sexual frustration. Teeth clashed. Tongues duelled. Fingers and hips thrust. Thumbs circled and teased.

Our pulses raced in tandem but our grunts and moans escaped at random.

It felt like I belonged in her and it didn't matter which part of me was. Whether it was my tongue my fingers or my dick I felt like it was my one purpose in life. Being a doctor was secondary to bringing Bella pleasure through whatever means possible. To feel her pussy with my fingers was to be as close to perfection as I could be at that moment.

The bullshit I had dismissed my entire life about soul mates and being made for one person was beginning to make sense for some reason. I didn't ever expect to fit one person so completely. Imagine spending a lifetime thinking that you are skeleton key when in actuality you were made specifically for one of those ornate boxes made by blind Tibetan nuns.

My fingers curled and pumped inside her, bringing her ever closer to the edge as she pumped her fist tightly around my dick leaving me seconds away from coming all over her hand.

"Bella." I grunted. "I'm almost there."

"Me too." She gasped, riding my hand. I watched her other hand move to her clit to give her that last push over the edge. I saw her orgasm explode in her eyes. I was used to women closing their eyes when they came but she locked hers onto mine. Seeing the pleasure etched across her face and the release in her eyes I came all over her hand. My groan lost in her mouth just as her moan was lost in mine when we collapsed lips first against each other.

"Fuck." I gasped as she giggled still riding the last tremors making her body shake.

"Third base for the win." Bella said against my lips.

"For the win indeed."

X~X~X

**A/N: Bella finally got some naughty touching!**

**Firstly, thanks to my pre-reader ladyeire3...she knows how awesome I think she is.**

**Secondly, thank you to all of you who read this, love it and review it...and those who recommend it too :D xx**

**Lastly, I hope you enjoy this because I am loving writing it.  
**


	10. When Bella Shows Edward a Scar

**Disclaimer: All things Twilight belong to another...I own too many trainers and an excessive credit card bill.**

**Chapter 10 – Bella**

**When Bella Shows Edward a Scar  
**

Whispers fought to get through my dream and wake me up. Jason Statham was saving the world from marauding dolphins as I looked on dressed inappropriately like a whore with an inflated rack that would make Pamela Anderson jealous. To be perfectly honest I didn't want to wake up, I was mere minutes away from indulging in some serious victorious fornication with the sexy Englishman.

I hate waking up before getting to the good stuff.

"Happy birthday, beautiful." A face nuzzled into my neck, two days worth of scruff scratched my skin and I hummed with happiness. I could feel arms and hands and lips on me, trying valiantly to bring me back to the real world.

"Mmmm, Jason." I sighed. The hands, lips and arms stopped all movement.

It was then that I realised that the body wrapped around me belonged to Edward and I was no longer in my dream world. I was thankful for that because dolphins had always freaked me out, so many people revered them and wanted to swim with them. Fuck. That.

Without opening my eyes I turned my body around to wrap around Edward.

"Who the fuck is Jason?"

"He's the defender of the earth against dolphins." I whispered close to his ear, my chin resting on his shoulder.

"I don't think I could compete with that."

"Luckily, you don't have to." Until the dolphins actually do try to take over the world, in which case Edward better have some mad skills or he is being abandoned for the nearest action hero with little to no hair.

"Now that you're actually awake I can tell you properly." He kissed along my shoulder. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you." I wanted to kiss the face off him but remembered morning breath issues just in time. "Waking up with you in my bed has already made this the best birthday ever." I sighed and swooned a little at the reality of it.

"If I had known you were this easily pleased I wouldn't have bothered with your present."

"I already told you, very seriously, that I didn't want a present."

"Tough." He could be so stubborn on some issues I had noticed. Most of the time he was happy to indulge me but there were some issues I couldn't budge him on. Like the whole cheese puff is a food group thing. I had resorted to having a stash at work due to all of the time we were spending together.

Ever since the day I found him asleep on my doorstep and skipped out on work early to seduce him we had spent every spare moment together. With the amount of time we each spent at work this didn't actually amount to much over the past week but we knew without saying that each second of leisure time was allocated to the other. It was kind of awesome having someone like me that much. No one ever had before.

Yet, with all the time spent with him, we still had not had our elusive third date.

This meant that there had been no penis entering the vagina fun.

But there had been lots of rounding the bases fun. That boy was all sorts of King with the bases. It was a wonder I could walk straight.

"What did you get me?" I may have told him no presents but that didn't mean I wasn't keen on finding out what it was.

"You'll find out later." He smiled against my neck where he had been kissing, nipping and sucking. I dug my nails into his back to show my displeasure, not expecting the sexy growl that would spring forth from him.

"Like that do you?" I muttered before doing it again, this time his hips pushed forward and his teeth nipped my skin harder which caused me to hitch my leg up over his hip. I crushed myself against the unyielding solidness of his body. There were parts of him that felt and looked like they had been chiselled out of marble but when I was pressed close to his body being held in his arms there was a hidden softness that comforted me.

There was nothing soft about the part of him pressing between my legs.

We writhed against each other, kissing the parts that we could reach. Edward's hands were tangled in my hair and he tugged my head gently back until he could kiss me properly, though I resisted because I was still in the try-not-to-make-him-throw-up phase of the relationship and was pretty sure that my morning breath was going to break that rule.

"Morning breath." I mumbled through lips that were clamped shut tighter than the cookie jar at fat camp.

"I don't care. Kiss me." His mouth wrapped around my earlobe, his hand splayed across my bare back to bring me half a millimetre closer. Any closer and I we were going to merge into one another.

If we started at the groin then it would be an incredibly happy merge.

Edward tried like a trooper to kiss me deeply, his soft lips curving against my hard lines. His tongue glanced across my mouth but I shook my head, our eyes locked with a look of frustration forming in the shape of a crease on his forehead.

"Love, please." One thing I learned over the past week was that whenever he said please I acquiesced. The sneaky little motherfudger must have picked up on it too. He smirked when he saw his victory in my eyes and his mouth closed over mine less than a second later.

His tongue was minty, making me realise that he must have been up longer than I thought. It slid against mine while he pushed against me until my back was flush with the mattress and he settled between my legs. Thin scraps of material were all that stood between that final merging but I knew better than to push it and, to be honest, I was getting off on the dry humping.

In more ways than one.

My heart raced and blood pulsed around my head. Erratic thumping was all I could hear and it took me only a second to discern a distinct difference in the noises. Edward caught the dawning look of horror on my face but he didn't understand it. The thumping continued and he finally heard it as I scrambled to get out from under him and cover my almost naked body before my door burst open and a body flew at the bed.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" The figure yelled.

"BABY!" I screamed back, laughing as Emmett seemed to change direction mid air and land on Edward instead of me.

"FUCK!" Edward yelled.

"I tried to stop him." Rosalie laughed, walking in and collapsing on the bed to wrap her arms around me. We held each other and laughed until we cried at the sight of Emmett lying haphazardly on top of a mostly naked and confused as hell Edward.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Edward mumbled, trying to extract himself from under Emmett. When he realised Emmett wasn't budging he looked at me for help.

"Every year, since I was 8, Emmett has greeted me with the Typewriter on the morning of my birth." I explained.

"What's the Typewriter?"

"Dude, wrong question." Rosalie groaned before we exploded in giggles again.

"You don't know the Typewriter?" Emmett shifted slightly to look at Edward who shook his head. "Let me show you." He snickered and Edward looked panicked, as he should because shit was about to get surreal for him.

In a flash Emmett had Edward's arms pinned under his knees and was pounding his chest with his fingers, pretending to type out a message as he said it. Every time he reached the end of a line he would slap Edward in the face.

"Happy birthday Bella." Slap. "Today is your final birthday as just awesome you." Slap. "Next year you'll have a baby." Slap. "A little baby Bella to make us all proud." Slap. "We love you more than Templeton Peck loves the ladies." Slap.

Emmett let Edward go, his left cheek red with the imprint of a massive hand and his eyes a little dazed as Emmett helped him up.

"That, my friend, is the Typewriter."

He hurried around to me and pressed himself into my side. I kissed his bright red cheek.

"Are you alright?" Rose asked sympathetically. We had both fallen victim to Emmett's Typewriter in the past but he had obviously not been rough, just playful. I suspected that he had taken out some of his latent annoyance with Edward getting me pregnant on his face and chest.

"Yeah. That was kinda cool." He bounced a little on the bed like he had just been initiated into a secret club.

"Edward, this is Rosalie." I finally introduced them, slightly wary of how things would go.

"That's the initiation taken care of." She joked. "Sorry you got cock blocked by the walking child over there."

"Don't worry about it." He smiled at her, relief obvious on his face and mine too I was sure. She nudged me gently with her elbow and quirked an eyebrow.

"Don't look so surprised, I'm not always an asshole." She huffed jokily at me before standing and pulling Emmett out of the room with a bright smile. "Breakfast in twenty minutes. Why don't you two lovebirds shower the smell of lust off and join us."

X~X~X

Over the years we had developed a few birthday traditions for each of us. Emmett always greeted us with the Typewriter, Rosalie always cooked breakfast and I was in charge of the cake. These things varied with each person, for example I didn't make my own cake but Emmett did. This always guaranteed a hilarious few hours in the kitchen where he would wear an apron, get covered in flour, panic and I would have to rescue the situation. We also indulged him with breakfast duties on Rosalie's birthday but the same rule applied of me having to take over to ensure our respective houses didn't burn to the foundations.

Every year since I left home Charlie would call me at twenty-six minutes past two, the moment he first held me in his arms, and sing happy birthday gruffly to me. Emotional outpourings were something of a rarity for him so I knew how much it took for him to sing that and for him to tell me he loved me, of which I never had any doubt.

Emmett and I would always take off for a couple of hours alone. We would go to the batting cages where he would laugh as I missed almost every hit and I would roll my eyes and wait patiently when someone inevitably recognised him and ask for his autograph or a picture. It was difficult sometimes, when people assumed they owned a part of him just because he was a football player. People believed a lot about him without thinking that maybe the papers had him wrong. Everyone knew he had a gorgeous blonde fiancé, so when we were followed by photographers and our pictures were taken when Rose was out of town it was splashed across the weekly rags that he was cheating on her with me.

Ridiculous.

"Bells, I booked up the usual for a couple of hours." Emmett talked around the food he had stuffed in his mouth.

"Sweet." I grinned in response, registering Edward's fleeting frown. "Emmett and I are going out for a few hours. You're welcome to stay here with Rose." I told him.

"Yeah, you can help me prepare to feed the five thousand." She mumbled and I rolled my eyes.

"It's us plus Alice and Jasper, it isn't a monumental feat of engineering to throw together some finger food suitable for an A-Team marathon."

Yes, another of my birthday rituals is an A-Team marathon.

"I'm beginning to hate that fucking show."

"Blasphemer!" Emmett shouted, leaping from his chair and pointing an accusing finger at her. He grabbed a slice of toast and held it aloft. "It's nutritious and delicious!" He yelled, much to my amusement, Edward's confusion and Rosalie's bemusement.

"When are you going out?" She asked ever so hopefully while Emmett checked his watch and motioned for me to get ready.

"Soon, my beloved, soon."

X~X~X

Edward followed me up to my room, sitting silently on the edge of the bed as I pulled on an Edward Scissorhands t-shirt with Johnny Depp's handsome face emblazoned on it with the words Team Edward framing him and a pair of jeans.

"Are they always like that?"

"Yeah, pretty much. It's just how they roll." I walked past him and he hooked his fingers into the belt loops of my jeans to pull me into him. His hands rested on my hips and he pressed his cheek against my stomach with a look of concentration. "What's Simba saying?" My hands massaged through his thick hair and I closed my eyes.

"He says happy birthday to Mommy." He kissed my stomach through the material of my t-shirt. "Team Edward, huh?"

"Like there was any doubt?" We grinned at each other like a couple of lovesick fools before I forced myself away from his touch. "Emmett and I always go to the batting cages for a couple of hours. Are you staying here?"

"I should probably go home and change into some clean clothes." He picked up a block of post-its that I kept by the side of my bed and tossed it in the air.

God, if I could hug the person who invented those I would. Every day. For at least five minutes a time.

"I was thinking." This was a lie, the thought I was about to vocalise had only just occurred to me. "Why don't you start keeping some clothes here? Like, have a drawer or something?" I hugged my arms around my torso, the words rushing out, making me too self conscious to even look at him.

"Really?" I tried to gauge his reaction from his tone. He sounded pleased, but I was sometimes completely off when it came to tone.

"If you want, I mean, you don't have to, it was just a thought. I know it's really early in our relationship, if that's what we have, if you want to call it that." I rambled until he covered my mouth with his hand and stood up.

"Do you want me to have a drawer?" I nodded.

"Do you want to see anyone else?" My eyes widened as he searched them with his own and I shook my head vigorously to be met with a grin.

"Can I be your boyfriend?"

If I could have captured this question in a glass jar, poked holes in the lid so that it wouldn't die and keep it forever I would have. He felt my smile against the hand he was still holding against my mouth.

I nodded.

He kissed me.

"Best birthday present ever."

"Hey, you know that an Edward is for life and not just for birthdays, right?"

"I think I'm realising that."

"Good." He graced me with another kiss and I floated off to the batting cages with Emmett.

X~X~X

Our yearly trip to the batting cages guaranteed two things. One, my helmet would be too big and it would impede my vision resulting in me trying to use it as an excuse for my poor performance. Two, at some point during the two hours I would lose the bat and almost always hit Emmett in the balls. While I never meant it in the strictest sense he would invariably wind me up to the point where even _I_ wondered whether it was on purpose.

This year, he told me in the car, he was wearing a cup.

"So, B, how are things with Eddie?" I stuck my ass out, my legs apart and the bat positioned just above my shoulder for optimum hitting. I winced when Emmett called Edward Eddie.

"Wow, I really don't like him being called that."

"That doesn't answer my question. Is he treating you like you deserve?"

"Better." I swung at a ball and missed, managing to spin my entire body around.

"Bella, you deserve someone who would invent a new stationery item and name it after you." Emmett knew me so well.

"He isn't putting out." Emmett guffawed. "He thinks that we should be going slow, three date rule and all of that other chivalrous nice stuff."

"Irony, thy name is Edward."

"Seriously though, no one has ever made me feel so liked." I admitted quietly, unsure whether Emmett could hear me above the people around us and the machinery.

"Plenty of people like you."

"Not in this way, Em'. I don't think anyone has liked me the way he does."

"Are you worried it's just because of the baby?"

"No."

"Good, because baby or not you deserve this." I managed a watery smile in his direction as I missed another ball. "I mean it Bella, you offer everything to the people in your life, it's about time someone offered you something back."

"Are you actually _trying_ to make the pregnant woman cry?" He bounded over to me, ignoring the machine projecting baseballs and bundled me up into his arms.

"Come here, you big softy."

"You and Rose offer me loads back." I sniffed. We walked to the side of the cage, ignoring a guy insisting we give it up if we weren't actually using it.

"We give you back what we can, but nothing compares to what a partner can give you." His big paw circled my back as I corralled my emotions back under control.

"Hey! Hey buddy! You and your girlfriend want to let someone else have a go?"

"Listen dude, this is a privately booked cage, take it up with the manager." He told the guy in a scarily even voice.

Emmett rarely loses his cool but when he does it's seldom on his own behalf. The only trouble he ever got in at school was in freshman year when a senior thought he would have a good time bullying a friend of his. The bullying stopped when Emmett invited the guy for a "meeting" during lunch. Of course the knucklehead was caught by a teacher but word soon spread that you didn't want to be invited to a McCarty Meeting.

"I think I will…hey…you're Emmett McCarty!" Emmett froze for a second before sighing deeply.

"I'm sorry, Bells. You going to be alright?" I sniffed and nodded, knowing that he was going to have to play the part of gregarious football player because he hated coming off like an asshole to people who gave a damn about the team. He released me and I went back to trying to hit the balls as he talked to the obnoxious time intruder.

It took Emmett twenty minutes to get rid of the guy and his friends who kept giving me little waves as I missed ball after ball. I saw him tell them off for checking me out but didn't hear the words. It could sometimes take him much longer to get rid of the people who crowded around him because the crowd always grew from natural curiosity. I couldn't understand how Rosalie could stand it, I knew it irritated me so it must have caused her serious heart burn.

We spent another half hour at the cages with Emmett trying his hardest to teach me how to hit the ball. It was the only source of discontent in our friendship, my inability to play sports. He took it as a personal slight, like I was completely fail on purpose. The only vaguely sporty thing I was ever good at was running. I was on the track team in senior year of high school because I had nothing better to do seeing as basically all of my friends had graduated and moved away.

So, yeah, I can run really fast in a straight line…this is not good enough for Emmett.

I rubbed my hands over my stomach and hoped that Edward was sporty and that Simba would inherit it so that Uncle Emmett wouldn't be devastated.

We drove back to my house after our time was up and talked, as we always did, about our childhoods. Some years we skirted around the issue of my Mom and her amazing disappearing trick but Emmett was already wary about making me cry because of the tears from earlier.

"Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like if we had worked out?" He asked me, referring to the summer we tried to be together because we figured we already loved each other so it wouldn't take much to make it work. The reality of it was that we could barely stand to touch each other because it felt too damn incestuous.

"No." I smiled and shook my head as he copied my motion.

"Me neither."

"I wouldn't have coped with all the attention you get. I get pissed off enough with people encroaching on my time with my best friend as it is. I can't even imagine how Rosalie must feel when she's trying to spend some quality time with her betrothed."

"She's solid, don't you worry. I tell that woman every day that I worship her."

"You're such a romantic." I grinned. "It makes me sick."

X~X~X

At exactly twenty six minutes past two Charlie called.

"Hey Dad." I smiled. I didn't talk to him as much as I should. It was easy to forget I wasn't the only one Mom left behind. Fundamentally I had done exactly the same thing to him. I left for college and not once did I think about going back to Forks except to visit him. There was an element of comfort in pretending that he filled his weeks with visits to friends and hanging out with his buds at a bar but that was a lie I told myself to make it easier to sleep at night.

"Happy birthday to you…" He sang, not exactly badly but he wasn't going to be setting the world alight with his crooning skills. I let him finish while I curled myself into Edward's side and smiled against his chest with my Dad singing in my ear. Edward's fingers rubbed softly across my stomach in protective circles. I still wasn't showing, my stomach still flat and no other discernable differences in my body. I was looking forward to the changes, it would make it tangible.

"You've been practicing, haven't you?" I joked when Charlie had finished the song.

"Only the best for my girl." He said with slight amusement. "I miss you, Tink." I smiled at my childhood nickname.

"I miss you too Dad." It hit me like a truck, the realisation that I carried his absence more closely than I expected. It left me breathless. "I'm going to come see you in a couple of weeks." I looked up at Edward who was watching me carefully. "I'm going to bring someone?" The question was aimed at them both, Edward nodded down at me with a smile and I waited for Charlie's response.

"Was that a question?"

"If it's ok with you, I want you to meet someone."

"Someone?" He thought it over. "A boyfriend?" My heart gave a little patter at the word.

"Yes. A boyfriend."

"Alright then." He sounded a little cautious but pleased too. He was probably beginning to think about throwing me in a convent due to the lack of people I've introduced him to in the past. "Emmett like him?"

"Yes, he is Emmett approved."

"I'll give him a chance then."

"Thanks Dad." I laughed with relief. We chatted about nothing much for a while. He told me about the new flat screen he bolted the wall of his living room unsuccessfully and then he told me about the replacement he bought after the first one had shattered on impact when it fell. He let me know how Billy, his best friend, had looked into some experimental procedures that could maybe help him walk again after the devastating accident that happened when I was little. Then he mentioned Jacob, Billy's son, and I lost interest because I had long since stopped caring about what was happening in his life.

"Anyway, I'm sure Emmett needs some help with the cake by now. I'll see you in a couple of weeks?"

"I'll call you when I know what day I can drive through, I'll stay a few nights. I miss you."

"Miss you too. I love you, kid."

"Love you too." We hung up and I hugged into Edward's side tighter to try to alleviate the emptiness. His fingers continued to rub across my stomach and he dropped kisses onto the top of my head. I loved how he could sit with me in silence and not push for the details. He didn't need to know everything about me as soon as it occurred because he already knew that when I was ready I would tell him.

"I think Emmett is burning something." He laughed into my hair.

"Oh god." Taking a deep breath I smelled the acrid air and winced.

True to form Emmett was covered in flour, panicking and burning something in the oven while Rosalie was doubled over from laughing at his expression. He clasped my shoulders in his hands and shook me gently, pleading me with his eyes to help him.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if you locked Emmett in a house where he has to fend for himself. There would have to an ambulance on standby but it would be worth it. Throw some cameras in there and it would win an Emmy.

I rescued the cake and turned it out. He watched on with obvious interest as I cut off the black edges and checked that it was still edible before I smothered it in icing and put it to the side. I couldn't help myself from checking over the things that Rosalie had prepared and found myself impressed with her handiwork. Living with Emmett had definitely improved her food preparation skills. She saw me nosing at the food and graced me with the bitch brow.

"Sorry." I mumbled. She opened her mouth to reprimand me but I was saved by the bell. Well, the knocker on my front door but the sentiment applies.

Alice and Jasper were almost completely hidden by the bags and parcels they held in their hands. Jasper looked particularly unimpressed with being loaded up like a pack mule but he beamed at me when the door opened while Alice dumped the bags she was holding in my hallway and threw herself into my arms.

"Happy birthday!" There was no need for Alice to yell but she did and my eardrum almost exploded from the volume.

"Thanks." I laughed, stumbling backwards under her assault. She let me go with a sheepish smile to unload her husband. When his arms were free he pulled me into a tight hug, my feet left the floor and he swung me gently.

"Happy birthday." I couldn't help but relax in his arms, I loved the feeling of comfort he afforded. "Why so sad, brown eyes?" He whispered and placed me softly back on the floor. I shook my head slightly but he took my hand with a smile and I couldn't help the smile I gave him in response.

"So not cool Jasper. I think we should ban magic on my birthday." He grinned cheekily but dropped my hand to raise his in surrender.

This was the moment of truth. Would Edward's world and mine mix or implode?

I don't even know why I was worried. If I had put a little more thought into it I would have realised that they are essentially the same. Rosalie and Jasper were the smart asses with hearts as big as their personalities while Alice and Emmett were the hearts of our individual units. Bring them together, add in cake and the A-Team and you've got yourself a party.

Jasper immediately cornered Emmett and asked him about football, Edward gravitated toward that conversation which left Alice and Rose to get to know each other while I was ready to mediate if it got a bit sticky. Rosalie was all set to be snarky, she was threatened by the speed with which I allowed Alice in my life when I usually took a while to let people in. After giving her a very obvious look up and down she cracked and almost blinded Alice with a smile.

"You own my favourite boutique." Rosalie informed Alice.

"I do?" Alice asked, cocking her head and smiling.

"I'm only in there _every_ week. The manager in there is seriously fucking cute. If I didn't have Emmett I would be trying to convert that man back to pussy ASAP." I gaped at Rose but Alice giggled.

"I know, right? Riley is divine, also, not gay."

"Hot damn." Rosalie glanced at Emmett. "Oh well, I'm good with what I have." She smiled.

Relieved that World War Three wasn't about to kick off I left them to talk shoes and designers I didn't have any opinion on. I knew I liked what turned up on my doorstep after a Rosalie spree but without her I would live in t-shirts with cartoon and comic book characters on the front and jeans so I couldn't actually contribute anything to the conversation.

Emmett had brought in my mail and left it on the old console table that sat in the hall. Scooping it up I folded my legs under me and sat on the couch in the living room, listening to the faint trails of conversation and laughter bleeding through from the kitchen. My birthday mail delivery consisted of a credit card bill, I really should remember to go paperless, three new menus for takeaway places just opening up in the area, a letter from work regarding share options, seven birthday cards, a letter and, rather bizarrely, a kitten starter pack.

I tossed everything but the cards and letter aside. Giving a further confused look to the kitten starter pack I tore open the cards. Emmett's parents had sent me one with an awesome hamster poem on it that made me giggle, I loved those guys. Charlie managed to send me a card that arrived on time this year. The last time he managed to do that was four years ago. Billy sent me one signed from him and Jacob. There were a few from friends dotted around the world and the last one was a generic card from work signed by the CEO.

Edward's laughter echoed through the room and I smiled automatically. Everyone filed into the room and the unopened letter was ignored as presents were pressed into my hands. Alice had ordered in maternity wear which explained what was in the many and varied bags she had loaded Jasper up with.

"You can tell me whether it's worth ordering the whole line for next season." She said to appease me and nip my protests at the sheer volume of the gifts in the bud.

Rose and Emmett handed me a business card.

"It's for a carpenter." Emmett beamed at me. I continued to look at him confused.

"He designs and makes furniture." Rosalie expanded and I looked around at my furniture feeling slightly judged.

"We have commissioned him to build a crib, sweets. You and Edward will design it with him and he will build it and we will pay."

"That's amazing." I jumped up and hugged them both tightly, grateful that it was a gift for the baby more than me.

"My turn." Edward cleared his throat to get my attention. Turning to him with a smile I accepted the offered card and tore it open. The card contained a brochure for an obscure restaurant situated between Seattle and Port Angeles. I had never heard of it but Alice and Rosalie gasped little puffs of air in recognition when they read it standing either side of me. There was a date written on the card and despite not knowing why he had chosen this place it still meant something important.

"Our third date?" I grinned shyly at him.

"Our third date." He repeated softly.

For my twenty-eighth birthday Edward Cullen gave me the promise of penetrative sex.

X~X~X

Alice and Rosalie cornered me in the kitchen as I was about to shove a cracker loaded with pâté in my mouth. It was unceremoniously ripped from my hands and thrown down on to the plate I picked it up from.

"What the…?"

"You aren't allowed pâté, it says so in the books Emmett bought you." Rosalie told me and I felt reprimanded like a student who didn't do their homework.

"I can't eat pâté? Fuck my life." I pouted. "You read those books?"

"Well, obviously."

"I love you." I hugged her round the waist and she batted me off gently.

"Edward will have to tell Laurent before they go for their third date." Alice said obliquely. Though Rosalie understood her immediately.

"Uh, go slow for the impaired here. Tell who-what-now?"

"Laurent owns the Victoria Restaurant. It's the most exclusive restaurant in Washington. You have to book years ahead, they only seat two parties a night and that's in two different dining rooms, it's expensive and exclusive and everyone wants to be able to say they dined there. They turned away the Obamas last time they were in the area because they didn't book in advance…how Edward got a table I'll never know." Alice was talking a mile a minute, pacing back and forward in a tight line that I worried would wear a hole in the wood.

"Right."

"I don't think you are getting it." Rosalie spoke slowly. "This. Is. Huge."

"I know! Third date!" I grinned and they rolled their eyes. "I would have been happy with a footlong from Subway."

"I bet you would." Snickered Rosalie and Alice joined in.

"I don't like you two together." I mumbled, taking my favourite seat and tracing the heart outline in the wood of the table.

"Better get used to it." Alice grinned and I knew I had created a two headed fashion obsessed monster.

"I do not agree to being ganged up on. I'm just putting that out there."

"The beauty of ganging up on someone is that agreement is usually not a prerequisite." I flicked my gaze between their faces and sighed the deep sigh of the damned.

"Fuck my life."

X~X~X

It was just before ten when everybody made their excuses and left. There was a good five minutes of hugs and laughter before I managed to shut the door and lean against it to listen to the silence. Edward watched me for a second before running his fingers across my cheek as he passed me on his way back into the living room. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the wood. I had loved every second of the day but exhaustion was descending fast.

I could hear Edward moving around in the other room, the muted clinks of glasses and plates being gathered broke me out of my almost nap like haze.

"Edward?" I called, collecting a few plates on my way to the kitchen. "You really don't have to help me tidy up." He was elbow deep in bubbles when I got to the kitchen. "Also, let me introduce to the wonders of modern technology." I opened the dishwasher with a flourish and let my jaw drop in astonishment at the machine.

"I didn't think you would want the long stem wine glasses in there." He rolled his eyes at my display and continued soaping up the glasses. After dropping the plates in the dishwasher I walked over to him, letting my hands slide around his waist I hugged him from behind. My cheek rested between his shoulder blades and I allowed myself the indulgence of basking in his relaxing smell and the heat radiating from his body.

"Thank you." I spoke into his shirt.

"It isn't a big deal, just a few glasses." He shrugged despite me being a hindrance and I shook my head.

"I meant for today, for the present, for being here."

"There honestly isn't anywhere else I would rather be." I felt like the Grinch when his heart swelled at Christmas. It felt like my heart was about to burst out of my chest.

I couldn't think of anything to say. Even though there were a million things flying around my head I couldn't find the right words. Everything I thought of felt wrong on my tongue, so in the end I said nothing. I pressed in tight to his back, feeling the muscles in his body move under his skin as he finished cleaning the glasses. I felt him pull the plug out and heard the water begin to empty out of the sink.

After drying his hands he turned and hugged me back, his nose buried into the hair on my crown and I felt him drop sporadic kisses there as we rocked in the silence that said more than either of us could. I yawned and sighed, unwilling to suggest we move because I was enjoying it so much. Edward dropped his embrace, unlatched my arms from around his waist to take my hand and lead me through to the sofa where we collapsed against each other without saying a word.

His shirt had ridden up to uncover a sliver of skin across his stomach, I immediately put my fingers there and played with the soft dark hair that covered his belly. For once it wasn't my hands in his hair, his fingers ran through my hair gently until he they caught in a tug and my head was jerked back violently.

"Ow!"

"Shit, sorry." He laughed and I straddled him, pinning his arms with my knees.

"Don't laugh, that hurt." I clamped my lips together to hide my own smile,

"You know I didn't mean it." He cocked his head to the side and unleashed a pout of such adorability that I almost fell over.

"Yeah, ok." He pulled his hands easily from under my knees and lifted my shirt. "Hey!"

"Are you really going to tell me off for lifting your shirt?" I pretended to think for all of five seconds before shaking my head. "Besides, I wasn't about to do anything untoward." His hands splayed out across my stomach before he lifted me slightly to push me back with him hovering above me. He kissed my stomach and started mumbling words that I couldn't quite hear.

My hands ended up raking through his hair, massaging his scalp as he spoke words I couldn't hear to my stomach. I wondered if there was ever going to be a time when I could hear Simba's heart beat in rhythm with my own as I cocooned him from the world in my body. I focused on hearing my own heart beat when words began to drift through to me from Edward.

"…love…can't wait…Mommy…birthday…music…hats…cigars…Auntie Alice…Mommy…love." I heard love a lot, it was the overwhelming message. That Edward was already in love with Simba I knew without a shadow of a doubt.

The realisation that I was falling in love with Edward, however, sent shivers through my body.

"Are you cold, love?" His head popped up, my eyes locking onto his deep forest green as I shook my head with a smile and closed my eyes to revel in the feeling of falling in love.

Twenty minutes passed as Edward told our baby about his life. He covered being a doctor and that he wouldn't be around as much as he would like to be for the first few months of his life, but that he would make it up to him. It was a promise, he said, and he never broke a promise. He pretended to pinkie promise through my belly button and I giggled until tears streamed down my face.

"Quit your laughing, you're ruining a perfectly good bonding moment." Edward's fingers tickled my ribs, making me squirm and laugh harder. "Hey, what's this?" I looked at Edward, he was reading the envelope I had tossed to the side earlier in the day.

"I don't know. Gimme." I held my hand out, waggling my fingers until I felt the paper.

"Who sends proper letters anymore?"

"I don't know." I repeated, curiosity finally getting the better of me. I looked at the hand written address and though the writing looked vaguely familiar I couldn't place it. Edward settled his cheek back on my stomach and resumed talking to Simba while I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the letter.

_Dear Bella, _

_This letter is late. So very, very late. It wouldn't surprise me if you were to toss it in the fire as soon as you realise that it is from me, your Mother._

I dropped it like it had burned me. All the air from my lungs rushed out and I struggled to bring more in. It took me a second to get upright, fighting against the added weight of Edward as I did so. When he realised I needed up he pulled away from me and helped me, his hand on my back as my head hovered between my knees.

"Bella?"

"Just give me a minute." I gasped, fighting the tears in my eyes and questioning my ridiculous reaction. Why couldn't I have reacted like a normal person to this? I wanted to be the kind of woman who wouldn't have some sort of panic attack to a letter. In front of Edward, this was humiliating.

"Do you need anything?" I shook my head.

"No, sorry." I heard him move and when I looked up he had the letter in his hand. "Are you reading it?"

"No. I would never…I was just picking it up, I was worried you were going to stand on it." He looked insulted that I even suggested he was reading it. I wouldn't have cared. Whether I read it or burn it he would end up knowing everything anyway. "Who is it from?"

"My Mother." I whispered, finally sitting up straight and dominating my stupid need to cry.

"Oh." He said nothing else, he waited for me to control the conversation and it reinforced the fact that I was falling in love with him. A fact that calmed me instead of sending the shivers through me again. Falling in love is terrifying, but with him I knew that not falling in love with him would be ten thousand times worse.

"So, you know she left us…me." He nodded, set the letter on the table before sitting back on the couch and turning off the only remaining light in the room with the exception of the fire we had built because the weather was turning cold already. He knew without me ever having to say a word that though I would happily say this stuff in the light, it was easier for me to reveal hidden hurts and scars in the dark. He would still see me clearly and without judgement in the dark and that meant the world to me.

"Come here." His fingers tugged on my arm and I lay my head on his lap, staring into the fire as he brushed the hair away from my face.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." He kissed my temple and waited patiently for me to continue.

"I was seven when she left. I was old enough to remember her quirks and her laugh, I was old enough to miss her every day until I started to hate her." I began, not sure when I would finish.

She never seemed happy, when I let myself remember the times that I thought were good she was never purely happy. Her laughs were always diluted by something I couldn't understand. She was four years younger than Charlie and only nineteen when they married. From what I could gather they were young and passionately in love. I was born ten months after they married and I can only guess that it was too soon for her.

Charlie loved Forks, growing up with him there I knew he would never leave but I don't think she realised that when she fell in love with him. She probably assumed he would follow wherever she lead but when that didn't become a reality she was angry and trapped in a town she hated.

Edward continued to caress my face with one hand while the other was low on my back, almost on my ass in fact but I didn't mind. I was still in my right mind and Edward's hand almost on my ass was a good distraction from the black hole of hurt I was allowing myself to remember.

It was three days after I got in trouble at school that she left. Weeks prior I had heard the phrase "need their heads knocked together" and I had put this phrase to practical use when Emmett and Jessica were arguing in the playground. Their faces were about an inch apart and they were screaming at each other over the stupidest thing so I knocked their heads together. Jessica's forehead held a perfect circle of a bruise almost immediately and she ran to tell on me.

For almost the entirety of grade school I blamed my actions on that day for her leaving.

"You were a kid, Bella, and if that had happened at any other time this would be a funny story to regale instead of a source of hurt." Edward told me.

"I know that now." I whispered. "But back then, I would have built a time machine out of twigs and gum to change it."

I walked home with Emmett, I told him, and we came inside to grab a snack before heading out to play. Usually she was home but this time I came home to a silent house with sandwiches and glasses of milk on the kitchen table with a letters propped up against them. She left one for Emmett too, all it said was_ look after her like your life depends on it_. I never read Charlie's, he burned it as I watched the tears slide down his cheeks and disappear into his moustache.

Emmett got more words than I did.

"That's fucked up." I winced slightly at his words, hoping he wouldn't feel it, but he did. "Sorry."

Charlie started working a little more, taking shifts that he wouldn't normally and volunteering to work some holidays. I knew it was his way of coping but it pushed me away. Mentally I'm Charlie but physically I was her and I don't think he could stand to look at me for a while. That's when Emmett's Mom and Dad practically adopted me. It took a couple of years but Charlie finally realised he had been hurting me and we rebuilt our relationship. He still worked long hours and I still worried that some errant vagabond was going to wander through Forks and kill him but we muddled through and over time the wounds scarred over and we lived like she never existed.

"You know that her leaving isn't your fault though, right?" I nodded, noticing that I had managed to silently cry through most of the conversation and Edward had a soggy leg.

"I don't understand how she could have left me, I don't think I ever will." We fell into silence and I tried to soak up some of my tears from his leg with my shirt.

"I think, that if you ever wanted to understand then this letter could be the first step." He spoke gently but stammered slightly, unsure of whether he was stepping over some invisible line.

"You're right. Read it to me?" I asked and waited, worried that I had asked too much.

"Ok." I reached over to the table, grabbed the letter and handed it to him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." He cleared his throat before he began.

Dear Bella,

_This letter is late. So very, very late. It wouldn't surprise me if you were to toss it in the fire as soon as you realise that it is from me, your Mother. There are a hundred ways for me to apologise to you for leaving but I have been too cowardly to do any of them. To leave you behind was unforgiveable. To allow myself to lose contact with you was monstrous. _

_I hope this letter finds you well and in time for your birthday. Happy birthday. Twenty-eight years old and, I have no doubt, every bit as beautiful as you were when you were born. _

_There is so much to make up to you, Bella, and I understand that there is much to explain. There is too much for a letter, I would love to be able to tell you everything in person. You should know that I loved you but I fell in love with another man and found myself pregnant with your sister. I could not stay but I knew I could not take you from your father._

_Please reply to me. Every imaginable way to contact me is written below should you find it in you to want to reply._

_Your Mother, _

_Renée_

"I have a sister?"

"It appears so." Edward tossed the letter onto the table and wrapped his arms around my shaking body. I didn't even realise I had been shaking but he must have felt the tremors as he read.

"I like being an only child." I muttered petulantly.

"It has been a long day, let's go to bed." He scooped me up easily and walked us up the stairs. Unwilling to think anymore of past hurt and late letters I allowed him to cradle me against his chest. Sometimes it was nice to be carried.

"You won't be able to do this for long." I joked, my hand placed protectively across my stomach.

"I'm stronger than I look." He smiled as I nuzzled my face into his neck.

"I don't care what happens in my life, I would never _ever_ be able to leave Simba behind, it would destroy me." I blurted."And if you ever tried to leave him behind I would have you tracked and killed."

"I would never leave him." The intensity of his gaze burned me. "You don't get rid of me easily."

"That's good, because I was beginning to think about keeping you." He kissed me without warning, his tongue exploring my mouth even though it knew every single part, and I returned it eagerly. It felt like we were sealing a pact, making a promise and, I have to say, kissing is a much better way to make a promise than using a pinkie. "Just drop me at the bathroom." I instructed him when he stopped using the wall to support me as we tongued the life out of each other and started onwards to the bedroom.

I staggered a little when he set me down, light headed from his kisses. I locked the door behind me. I always locked the bathroom door, even when I was in the house by myself. There would be no accidently walking in on me peeing. Ever. It's a line that should never be crossed.

I grabbed my toothbrush out of the drawer, covered it in toothpaste, shoved it in my mouth and glanced in the mirror, fully prepared to wince when I saw the mess I was after crying. What I saw wasn't the mascara streaks across my cheeks or the redness of my eyes or the bags underneath them. What I saw was a bright yellow post-it stuck dead centre with neat writing across it. Curious I peeled it away from the mirror and read the writing.

_Bella rocks my world_

My stomach lurched when I realised that I wasn't falling in love with Edward after all.

I was already there.

X~X~X

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed the latest update, if you did why not pimp it to your friends and neighbours?**

**Again, my infinite thanks are awarded to my pre-reader ladyeire3 who is all sorts of awesome.  
**

**Reviews will be rewarded with the hamster poem on Bella's birthday card from Emmett's parents...be warned it's a little mental and most likely won't hit everyones funny bone like it did mine. Oh, and you'll get a little teaser too :D **

**Be good kids, see you on the other side xx  
**


	11. When Edward Finally Puts Out

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything Twilight Saga related. I do own all the words that follow.**

**When Edward Finally Puts Out**

**Chapter 11 – Edward**

Bella was in pain. I could tell in the moments that weren't masked by her laughter, her smiles and her sighs that it was there. It wasn't physical, there was no diagnosis and cure I could offer. She pretended she wasn't, but when she thought I wasn't looking I could see it pouring freely out of her. I internalise everything myself, I shut people out and I hide in my mind, so I knew what she was doing. It afforded me a modicum of comfort.

But I now know how frustrating it can be to the people closest to you.

We operated as normal in the days following her birthday and the letter that had gouged open an old wound. We left for work and came back together at the end of the day or whenever we could. I presumed she acted as she always had with the people she worked with. Each time I arrived at her house I would add to the drawer that was now mine, the one she cleared out with a giddy smile that I matched. Soon I was going to need another drawer, or some closet space. I would probably have to clear the closet space with Rosalie seeing as that was her domain.

We were two days away from our third date. My nerve endings energised every time I thought about it. I was at serious risk of spontaneous ejaculation whenever it crossed my mind. Being knuckle deep in her was one thing, being balls deep was an entirely different matter. I groaned softly at the thought and she shifted a little to look at me.

Her head was resting in the curve between my ribs and my hip, her cheek pressed against the bare skin because she insisted I be topless as often as possible. If I wasn't so infatuated with her I would be insulted by the connotations of being merely something for her to look at. As revenge I insisted upon the same rule, so while her cheek was resting on me her boobs were also pressed into the small of my back.

"What are you smirking about?"

"Our third date." I told her honestly. She craned her head forward a little and returned my smirk after glancing at my crotch.

"If I didn't know any better I would think you were excited about the end of our third date, instead of being excited about my witty banter and the food."

"No more excited about the end of the date than you are, love." My fingers toyed with the strands of her hair.

"Pretty damn excited then." She cocked an eyebrow at me before settling her cheek back on my side, stroking her fingers across the hair on my stomach and returning her attention to the roller-skating ladies in the movie we were watching.

I'm not sure I can last another two days.

"Do you think she looks like me?" Bella asked quietly.

"Who? Ellen Page?" I was concentrating on calming my raging crotch so I wasn't quite sure who she was talking about.

"My sister."

"I honestly don't know."

"She might." Thoughts bleed out, by random questions and supposition when someone who internalises is finally ready to talk.

"You're right, she might, but she might not. She might look like her Dad." Bella frowned and I tugged on her arms to pull her face closer to mine. She crawled up my body and let me hug her.

"I can't believe she left me behind to have another baby."

"I can't believe it either."

"She could have written, or called, or left me a number to call her on." She mumbled against my neck.

"She should have."

"She replaced me." Her body heaved in my arms at the words, like they had landed a physical blow, my neck became wet with her sudden outpouring of tears. "I'm sorry." She whispered.

"Don't apologise for being upset, Bella. I'm here for this. You have me." My hands traced what I hoped were comforting patterns across her bare back as she sobbed uncontrollably in my arms.

"She'll be twenty-one. She's had three times as many years than I did. She probably got the undiluted happiness." Fresh tears rolled down Bella's face as sob after sob continued to shake her body. I was beginning to worry about the effect this would be having on her and the baby.

"Bella, I need you to calm down."

"I'm trying. I promise I'm trying, I don't want to be crying uncontrollably."

"Do you need me to call someone? I'm not sure that I'm enough right now."

"You're enough, you're more than enough, you're all I need." Her fingers gripped me tightly in a panic. "Don't leave."

"I wasn't going to leave. I told you before, I'm hard to get rid of." Her legs wrapped tightly around me as she nodded at me.

But as soon as she realised I wasn't going anywhere the sobbing resumed.

I wasn't a psychologist, I wasn't qualified to deal with grief even if I knew enough about it to know that's what it was. Her absolute heartbreak was something I was ill equipped to deal with. But I would try. Step one would be to get some clothes on the woman because it just seemed wrong that she was topless and sobbing.

I stretched and picked up Bella's shirt to pull over her head.

"Bella, I need you to put this on for me." I spoke softly, trying not to spook or upset her any further. I sat her up on the couch and kneeled on the floor in front of her. She nodded in response and lifted her arms for me to place the shirt over them. I tried not to look at her chest, honestly I did, but I couldn't help it and she saw. Her face cracked into a smile and just like that she was doubled over with laughter, tears still streaming out of her eyes but for an entirely different reason.

"Holy shit." She gasped, giggling and holding her stomach. "I'm in tears and distraught and you couldn't help but ogle me! Jesus, you should have gone for broke and copped a feel too."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but, well, they are _great_ tits." I grinned at her and she stopped laughing with a little sigh.

"I'm so sorry I had a complete meltdown."

"You never have to apologise for that." I shuffled on my knees to the space between her legs and kissed her cheek. "So, next time you're like that I should just cop a feel?" Her hand slapped gently against my chest as she giggled again.

"Perv." She can't have been annoyed with me considering the next thing I knew was her wet lips were pressed against mine.

"Mmm, salty." Her limbs wrapped around me again, it felt like our most natural state and her mouth hovered beside my ear.

"Could I ask you a favour?" I nodded a little too eagerly and she continued. "I need you kiss me until I forget my name."

"That's hardly a favour, I want to do that every second I'm awake." I told her, taking her head in my hands and getting lost in the stormy waters of her eyes. We sat like that for a second that felt like eternity, the ferocity of our gaze trying to tell the other the final piece of the puzzle, the final part of ourselves.

"Shut up and kiss me." She breathed against my mouth.

So I did what every right minded man would do upon hearing that order.

I complied.

~X~X~

I was banished from Bella's house until our date by Rosalie and Alice. My own sister, who knew perfectly well that my heart raced that little bit faster when I wasn't in Bella's vicinity, had used her freaky midget strength to manhandle me out of the house.

It only took twenty minutes to shower and change, leaving me roughly six hours to kill until I could reasonably go back to Bella's and feign innocence at being an hour early. I ran my tongue across my teeth and decided to give them a brush because they didn't feel shiny.

I like my teeth to feel shiny. A man shouldn't be judged on this.

It took me a second of wondering where my toothbrush was to realise I had left it at Bella's. Slowly but surely I was moving myself into her house and it began with my toothbrush. A normal person may have taken a spare to keep there. Not me, I took my alpha toothbrush, leaving me no omega at my own place. Finally I found a spare crammed at the back of a cupboard and I spent ten minutes furiously brushing and foaming the paste until I got toothpaste fangs.

After another twenty minutes of staring pointlessly at the ceiling I picked up my phone.

"What do you want? I'm writing." Jasper barked.

"I'm bored."

"Go bug Bella then."

"I can't. Your wife threw me out." I raked my fingers through my hair but it didn't feel as good as when Bella did it.

"Yeah, she does that to people."

"Want to do something?"

"You know you need to get more friends, right? It's unhealthy for you to be that close to your sister and for your only friend to be her husband."

"You aren't my only friend." I muttered. "Besides, you were mine first."

"If you weren't so obviously in love with Bella that sentence would be yet more proof to put in my Edward is gay folder."

"It's too soon for love. Wait, you have a folder?"

"I'm an unusually organised man. I fell in love with Alice on our first date."

"No you didn't. You came home and told me the whole evening was weird and I threatened to kick your ass for messing with my sister."

"Doesn't mean I wasn't in love with her already." I could practically hear him shrug through the phone.

The fact that he was right was the most annoying thing. The second most annoying thing was my head telling me that it was too quick, that maybe I loved the kid inside her and it was clouding my judgement about our whole relationship.

"It isn't just the baby."

"What, are you a mind reader now too?" I hissed.

"Shut up, douche. Listen up and listen good, fucko. You're in love with that woman and would be even if she wasn't incubating your demon seed in her womb." He stated calmly and I sighed.

"You aren't fucking with me are you? Throwing some feelings of love at me?"

"Trust me, I would never throw feelings of love at you after last time." I shuddered and sat in silence for a second remembering that night.

"So, can I come over?"

"Only if you bring Emmett." Jasper hung up before I could reply.

~X~X~

"Thanks for calling me. It has been ages since I hung out with a normal guy. Usually I hang with the guys on the team and they are all macho and stuff."

After calling Emmett and convincing him to spend some time with me in a surprisingly short amount of time I picked him up and took him to Jasper's.

He hadn't stopped chattering away since he got in the car.

"Not that you and Jasper aren't manly. You're just not athletes. Not that either of you are out of shape."

"Emmett?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright?" I glanced at him and he was shifting nervously.

"I promised Bella I would play nice, I'm on my best behaviour because she said she would kick my ass if I made you feel in any way uncomfortable." He muttered and I swear the man blushed a little before looking out of the window.

"I don't think there's anything more likely to put me off than being pinned to a wall by you. Been there, done that. Relax, please. You're putting me on edge."

"Sorry about that." He grinned sheepishly and scrubbed his hand over the top of his head down to his neck. I just shrugged because there wasn't anything else to say about that. I accepted his apology and, to be honest, I thought it was kind of cool to have that story in my arsenal.

Jasper had the door open with a smug look plastered all over his face before I had even parked. He ushered us inside, handing us both a beer and gesturing for us to take seats. He was nothing if not a consummate host.

Didn't make him any less of a tool.

We played Halo for a few hours, me failing miserably because I utilised my spare time more effectively than either of them. Jasper was, for all intents and purposes, living like an unemployed alcoholic. Emmett was in the off season so all he had to do in a day was work out. I suddenly felt like the adult of the group.

I was almost asleep from boredom when my phone chirped at me. With a sigh I slid open the lock and glanced at the text.

_They have torture devices. My scalp hurts. Send help. xx _

The smile that appeared on my face was automatic. I was conditioned to react to anything that involved Bella with a massive, entirely emasculating, grin. One which would be seen from space. I don't know how she did it, but she must have taken lessons from the masters. Pavlov and Skinner would be proud of their little protégé.

"I need one guess." Jasper smirked at me. "I can't even stand being in the same room as you right now. Tone it down please." Emmett looked between us both confused.

"What?"

"Between the lust and the love he feels for your girl I'm in danger of mounting you." Jasper told a completely bemused Emmett.

"Fine, I'll be in the kitchen." I waved my phone at him. "I don't want to be responsible for the ass rape of an NFL MVP." I ducked through the door just catching Jasper's reply.

"Who said it would be the ass? He has an awfully purty mouth."

After recovering from laughing I managed to send a reply to Bella.

_The lone wolf moves North at night xx_

_Are you trying to tell me that you're a one man wolf pack? Because I always saw you as a one man lion pride ;) xx_

_How early is too early to "rescue" you? Xx_

_*swoon* my hero. There isn't a too early. Come for me as soon as you can. They keep spraying me with stuff xx_

_30 minutes xx_

X~X~X

Spending the day in enforced separation from Bella proved one thing to me. I was hopelessly attached to her and I had no intention of rectifying the dependence that had begun to form. So long as it didn't spiral into a dangerous obsession there would be nothing wrong with it.

It only took me forty minutes to extricate Bella from my sister's talons, get her out of the house and in the car. It was world record speed. I had been sure it would take far longer than that to get her safely strapped into my car.

Safe is a relative word, because even though she was safely strapped in I couldn't take my eyes off her so anything could happen. I had been a slack jawed yokel when she appeared at the top of her stairs with a shy smile. I felt like I was picking her up for prom or something. She was wearing a halter neck dress in black and navy blue, the skirt puffed out from her hips and ended above her knees. A gold cuff was clinging to the flesh of her wrist and her shoes were nothing but straps.

I never knew I had a thing about noticing women's shoes before Bella, but I don't think I had seen her in the same pair twice and it was becoming an odd fascination of mine. I wasn't at the point of fetish, I didn't want to sniff them or anything weird, but I couldn't help notice them.

She did a coy little spin for me, her hair in loose curls that tumbled down her back wafting her fragrance in my direction. I caught glimpses of the skin beneath her hair, the lines of her shoulder blades and I couldn't wait to get her alone after dinner. To peel that dress off her was going to be a memory preciously stored, to be dusted off and gazed at for years to come in moments of nostalgia.

Our hands were entwined, her fingers stroking across mine sporadically as if to make sure I was corporeal.

"Rose and Alice say this place is a big deal." Her teeth were chewing on her lips.

"Are you nervous? You shouldn't be. Laurent is just a friend with a restaurant doing me a favour."

"Alice is going to torture you for an introduction, she had no idea you knew him." She chuckled and I laughed.

"We met in medical school, he dropped out to go to Paris and study culinary arts. I wasn't keeping him secret or anything, we fell out of touch and bumped into each other again last year."

"It all makes sense now." Another smile of Bella's I had never seen graced her face. "So, does he help you out a lot with dates and stuff?" I glanced at her and saw that she had started chewing on her index finger.

"No, it isn't like I'm a smooth operating ladies' man, Bella. You should know that by now."

"I do." She sighed. "I'm sorry." Her fingers tightened around my hand briefly.

"You chew on things when you're thinking, your lip, your finger. You're orally fixated." I wiggled my eyebrows at her lecherously to make her laughter fill the car.

"Yeah, you should know that by now." She waggled her eyebrows right back at me, making me laugh along with her.

The drive to Laurent's restaurant took around 3 hours. Laurent had the foresight to realise that nobody wanted to do the drive back to Seattle after his decadent dinners when he was still in the planning stage so had also converted a couple of outbuildings on the property into rooms just as luxurious as his restaurant. This was a detail Bella was unaware of, if Alice and Rosalie had managed to keep their mouths shut at any rate. Rosalie had snuck an overnight bag into the trunk of my car while Bella was distracted by Alice.

The journey passed comfortably, we chatted easily about nonsense. My plan was to avoid mention of her Mother completely because I didn't want anything to ruin tonight. She took control of the music and when Kings of Leon started I sang along.

"I love that song." I nodded my head towards the display.

"I hope you aren't trying to tell me something." She sniggered.

"Huh?"

"I'd come inside your party but I'm soft?" Her eyebrow raised and she fought back a smirk.

"Have I given you cause to worry about that in the past?"

"No, but performance anxiety could have reared its ugly head. You know, the pressure of me expecting you to rock my world and nothing less will do."

"Is that right?"

"Damn straight mister. I want to see stars." She grinned and turned to look out of the window to watch the passing scenery leaving me to wallow in my sudden panic in peace.

What if I completely fail tonight?

I should get drunk to give me some bravado.

If I get too drunk I may not be able to get it up.

While I've never had a problem getting an erection in my life, particularly when I'm around Bella because she just needs to smile at me and I want to plunge tip first into her, there's always a first time for everything.

Oh my Lord.

I made sure that my panic wasn't showing on my face but with a simple jokey comment I was a slave to performance anxiety.

X~X~X

Laurent greeted us with a massive smile, Bella was charmed when he kissed her hand in greeting and amused when he slapped me hard on the back in a familiar greeting that left me with a throbbing area the size of his hand. I had called him through the week to let him know that Bella was pregnant and emailed him a list of foods she couldn't have. Outside of our circle of six he was the only person who knew.

He escorted us through to our private dining room, pulling Bella's chair out for her and relieving her of the blue wrap thing she had around her bare shoulders. It was an old building, no matter how hot it was outside it was still cool within the walls. An open fire roared heat into the room through a wrought iron grate and caused shadows to flicker across the crimson and gold walls.

This was the first time I had been here. Laurent had shown me pictures and described the place but his description did not do his livelihood justice.

"This place is amazing." Bella whispered across the table at me, her eyes round with delight.

"You don't have to whisper." I whispered back at her. "The place isn't bugged or anything, it's entirely private."

"Of course it isn't, I'm just…in awe of this place. I understand now why Rose and Alice were so jealous." She smiled beatifically across the table. "Do we get a menu?"

"Laurent varies his dishes week by week, there are no menus. I had to tell him about the baby, and send him a list of the things you can't have. He worked around that for us." I reached my hand across the table to cover hers, grazing my fingers across the back of her hand.

I was about to continue the conversation when our waiter walked in, his blue eyes locking onto Bella immediately and he licked his lips in a way that made me want to punch him. He offered us the only menu available to patrons, the wine menu. Underneath the house, Laurent had explained, was a cellar that mimicked the floor plan of the house above. Perfect for the wine cellar he had dreamed about since the first drop of a 1787 Chateau Lafite caressed his tongue.

I don't think I could have imagined a better evening for us. Laurent had thought of everything. Bella was given the choice of a selection of waters and juices, the courses were presented perfectly and by the end of the evening we were both drunk from each other. I had a couple of glasses of wine while we indulged in Cornish game hen served with a red radish julienne salad with white truffle oil. Had I been alone I would most likely have given in to the temptation to have more than a couple of glasses but with Bella sober and missing her love of a glass of wine I couldn't rub her nose in it too blatantly.

If I had been a proper gentleman I wouldn't have had any, but her comment from earlier still weighed heavily on my mind. She wants to see stars?

How does a man live up to that?

"This has been perfect." Bella sighed, rubbing her stomach and grinning at me. "I'm really not looking forward to driving us home. It's going to take forever."

"Eager to get home for something in particular?"

"I'm on a promise tonight." She winked. "By the time we get back all we'll want to do is crawl into bed for sleep."

"It's a good thing we aren't heading back to Seattle then, isn't it?" A questioning smile appeared as she tilted her head.

"We aren't?"

"Nope." I got up from my chair and took the two steps over to her. I brought my face level with hers, kissing her gently, my tongue glancing across her lips and pushing into her welcoming mouth. I could taste the beetroot chocolate cake on her tongue when it slid along mine. Pulling away from her I kissed her twice more in succession.

"I'll be back in a second." She nodded at me in daze.

I found Laurent in the kitchen, his cooking work done for the evening but the cleaning just beginning. The man was fastidious in his kitchen cleanliness.

"Edward. How have you enjoyed your evening?"

"It has been unreal. Thank you so much." I shook his hand.

"Of course." He shrugged, like it was even a question that he wouldn't do me a favour.

"Did you have someone bring the bags in?"

"They are in room 2." He rummaged through a pocket and handed me a solid brass key with a number 2 engraved on it. "She is very beautiful. You are a lucky man."

"Don't I know it." I laughed. "She's…everything."

"The Mother of your child, also."

"That's still something of a secret." He nodded.

"We will catch up soon, Edward, but now you should tend to your love's needs." He winked and somehow managed to make it non sleazy. I gave him a nod and returned to the dining room to my waiting Bella.

I could hear her laughter through the small opening between the door and the frame. Our waiter was standing grinning down at her as she laughed politely but turned her gaze towards the door when I stepped into the room.

"Hey." She stood and walked over to me, a smile on her face that I couldn't help but return. "Are you going to explain the whole us not going home thing?"

"We have a room, I had Rosalie and Alice pack you a bag." She slid her arms up around my neck and kissed the side of my mouth.

"Perfect. Though I dread to think what those two have packed for me." She smirked and I indicated with my eyes that the waiter could leave. Taking Bella's hand I led her through the building and out the back door to a path lit by hurricane lanterns. She skipped a little ahead, still clasping my hand, and I lifted her hand above her so she could twirl under it.

"Bella? I…" I couldn't finish my sentence, the words stuck in my throat. Nothing I could say would convey what I actually felt. I couldn't even tell you what I did feel because I'd never experienced it before to give it a name. Her spins stopped as she waited for me to finish.

"You?"

"You're amazing." I pulled her close to me and wrapped my arms around her. "You're beautiful." I kissed her forehead. "You're funny." I kissed the tip of her nose and she giggled. "You're kind." I kissed her cheek. "You're clever and witty." I kissed her other cheek. "You're everything I never knew I always wanted." I kissed her mouth, tugging gently on her bottom lip to make her mew a little at me as I winced internally at the clichéd line I had just thrown at her.

"You know what else I am?"

"No, what?"

"Completely and utterly yours."

We had reached our door and I pressed her against it, our breathing heavy and our touches light. I thrust the key into the lock and walked her in backwards, our mouths locked together, our tongues working the rhythm we had grown accustomed to.

I pulled away to catch my breath and Bella looked around the room. Together we absorbed the sight of the four poster bed dominating the floor space, the crisp white linen contrasting with the dark woods and purple and silver walls. Our bags sat on an old fashioned wooden trunk and Bella walked over to investigate what Rose and Alice had packed for her.

"Look at this." She sniggered, holding up what looked like string holding together sheer material of some description. "Not in a month of Sundays." She muttered and threw it back in. "Jammies!" She grinned, holding up a pair of silky shorts and a matching vest.

"I like those." I nodded and wandered over to her. Gathering her hair in my hand I pulled it away from her back and bundled it over her shoulder before placing kisses across the bare skin showing above her dress. Her body trembled under my lips as I caught her hips in my hands and pulled her back against me, the rustling of her dress and the heaviness of our breath the only sounds in the room.

My fingers shook when I brought them up to unhook the clips holding her dress in place at the nape of her neck. This woman expected stars, it's no wonder my fingers shook. The silk of her dress felt good against my skin, I let the two sides drop forward and followed the journey with my fingers. I ran my hands from the back of her neck to the front, pausing briefly where more material met skin before slowly pulling the dress down to her waist.

"Are you nervous?" Bella asked, obviously noting my trembling touch.

"You want stars, of course I'm nervous." She turned in my arms and cupped my face with her soft hands.

"Edward, I see stars when I'm kissing you, I see stars when you hold my hand, I see stars when you give me the smile that tells me all I need to know. You shouldn't be nervous. I've already seen a galaxy of them." Her mouth closed over mine in a reassuring kiss.

I slid down the zip at the back of her dress and we let it fall to the floor in a crumple of fabric. Bella stepped out of the pile of material towards the bed, breaking our kiss to take off her shoes but I stopped her hand.

"Leave them on."

"Really?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. She looked phenomenal in her matching purple underwear and strappy shoes, I didn't want to take any of it off her body. I was using it to block out the lyrics to the song I now hated with a passion.

_I'm in I can't get off, so soft_

She reached around her body to unclasp her bra, sliding it slowly down her pale arms and unveiling to me her breasts. With one step I was directly in front of her, my hands massaging the warm flesh as she gasped at the coolness of my fingers. Her nipples hardened under my touch and I dipped my head to take one into my mouth, my tongue circling and soothing after I pulled the skin with my teeth. She pushed her body against mine, her fingers fumbling for the buttons of my shirt as I continued to grope her tits like a schoolboy.

_I'd pop myself in your body_

"Shirt!" She ground out in frustration. Removing my hands from the warmth of her skin I quickly undid some buttons before getting too frustrated and ripping the rest open with a grunt. Her hands slid it from my torso, fingertips brushing against the muscles of my stomach on the way down to my belt.

_I'd come into your party, but I'm soft_

I'm never listening to that fucking song again.

Her hand curled around my cock through my trousers and I hissed at the sensation. I raised my eyes to the ceiling and thanked every deity I could think of for my almost painfully hard dick. I folded my arms around Bella, kissing along her collar bone and up her neck. Her breaths were coming in little exhalations that glanced off the skin of my jaw every time my lips touched her body.

Walking us back to the bed I didn't stop until she had no choice but to sit on it. I stepped back, locking my eyes on hers as I undid my belt and carelessly dropped my pants to the floor. Kneeling in front of her I slipped my fingers into the elastic of her panties and pulled, her hips lifted for me to slide them completely off one leg and I left them hanging on the heel of her shoe as I settled the backs of her knees on my shoulders.

"Edward…just…touch me." I licked my lips and watched her tug at her nipples before I took one of her hands.

"I just want to check you're ready for me, love." I took our fingers and circled them around her clit, she let her head fall back at the sensation but it whipped back up when I slid our fingers inside her. "Is all this for me? Do I do this to you?" Her wet pussy had covered our fingers instantly, she nodded mutely when I pulled our fingers out and put them in my mouth. "You taste so good."

"Please."

I really did love it when she begged.

"Please what?"

"I want you inside me, I want you, Edward…just…please!"

"Bella, soon you're going to feel every inch of me…but I want to make you come with my mouth first." She groaned and her body dropped onto the bed, her heels digging into my back with anticipation.

My mouth covered her clit, flicking and nipping the way I knew she liked it. I wanted to make her come quick because I wanted to be inside her just as much as she did. I pushed two fingers into her and she fisted her fingers into my hair, circling my fingers quickly around her entrance and coating them in her juices as I dragged my flat tongue from her entrance to her clit. She bucked under my mouth, her walls pulsing around my fingers when I curled them and sought out the little bundle of nerve endings inside her. I bit softly down on her clit when I found it, humming with enjoyment at clenching of her walls around my fingers and the sound of her crying out. The spasms of orgasm ricocheted through her body, her heels digging deep into my back and her hips bucking towards my mouth, pushing my face deeper into her folds.

"You give good tongue." She whimpered when I urged her to slide further up the bed before stripping off my boxers and crawling up to settle between her legs. My cock twitched in the direction of her entrance like she was true north and it was a compass. I kissed her deeply, my tongue invading her mouth and sliding against hers.

"Can you taste yourself, love, because you taste amazing." I said against her lips before thrusting it into her mouth again, swallowing her moans in mine. She slid her hand down between us to grasp me firmly.

"Enough foreplay, I think it's about time you fucked me." My hips nudged forward unconsciously at her words. "I want to feel every inch of your thick, hard cock inside me, Edward."

"I love it when you talk dirty, Bella." I groaned, dropping my forehead to her shoulder. Turning my head I kissed her neck as she guided the tip of my dick to her entrance, slipping me in an inch. When I was in place her hand retreated and settled on my ass, she pushed firmly against it to move me closer and further in.

I could feel her stretch and adjust to accommodate me with every inch going in.

Sliding in for home had never felt so rewarding.

My eyes rolled back in my head as she welcomed and enveloped me in her body. I bit and sucked the side of her neck, just above the carotid when, with a final thrust, I was fully inside her.

"Fuck." I grunted and she tightened around me. "Bella…you have…the best fucking pussy I have ever felt." She dug her teeth into my neck, just below my earlobe to acknowledge the most candid compliment I have ever given in my life.

The sensation was completely superior to everything that had gone before. I pulled out and thrust back in hard, so overwhelmed by her to even begin controlling my urges. She gasped and urged me on, her hips lifting to meet my thrusts. It was going to be over in seconds if I didn't control myself, but I couldn't.

Air hit my shaft before it was slammed back into wet warmth. Bella's groans filled the room and my grunts filled the silence. We moved together, our skin slapping as our bodies met with jarring thrusts. My balls tightened and my hips moved erratically, Bella slid a hand down to her clit to add to the pressure she needed. I caught her mouth with mine, our tongues duelling as my cock slid out and slammed back in. I dropped my forehead back to her shoulder, swallowing loudly and sucking on her skin.

"I'm coming, love, I can't hold it."

"Don't hold it, I want you to come." She gasped through the beginnings of her orgasm. Her walls pulsed around me, pushing me over the edge, my hips thrust violently, our skin slapped loudly. With a cry I tried to stifle by clamping my teeth onto Bella's shoulder I emptied myself deep inside of her.

We lay in a stunned silence for moments, trying to get our breathing under control and kissing any part of the other we could reach. I lifted my head to look at her flushed and happy face. Her hands cupped my face, pulling me to her lips and she peppered kisses across my cheeks, nose and jaw with a happy laugh.

"Are you ok?" Her lips closed over mine and she whispered her reply.

"I see stars."

X~X~X

**A/N: Firstly, thanks to ladyeire3, she's wicked nice and helpful.**

**Secondly, apologies for the massive delay in getting this latest chapter up, real life kicked my ass with the combination of being back at college, working a tonne, having a birthday and trying to maintain a semblance of a social life. **

**Thirdly, a couple of rec's**

Somewhere Between the Crimson and the Blue – Antiaol

Take the Ice – Bellamarie117

PaperCutouts – twistedcoincidence

The Hood – Yogagal

Dead on my Feet – Cesca Marie

**Fourthly, about half the review replies were sent without the hamster poem and I would hate to disappoint the people who were looking forward to it so I've put it below. **

**Lastly, leave me a review…I really really really do love them :D Also, feel free to pimp my fic to folks because I feel slightly reticent about doing it myself. **

**The "Madness" of Hamster: A Poem by Edward Monkton.**

Every night they visit you,

Every night they come,

And bit by bit,

They steal your brain,

And feed it to their Mum.


	12. When Bella Googles Edward

**Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own anything Twilight Saga related but I do own these words.**

**Chapter 12 – Bella**

**When Bella Googles Edward  
**

Waking up wrapped in Edward's embrace is not something I will ever take for granted. The weight of his arm thrown across my body anchored me in reality. Sometimes I wanted to pinch him to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I wouldn't pinch _myself_ because I'm averse to the blinding pain of a vicious pinch. Seriously, used effectively the pinch and twist was a debilitating move.

If I'm that much of a coward about nipping pain then I was going to be a complete yellow belly about labour.

Oh sweet Christ…labour.

I'm having all the drugs they can feasibly pump into me without the possibility of the baby coming out a ready-made stoner.

It took me a few seconds to work out where we were. The previous night came rushing back to me and I couldn't supress the victorious grin that formed. I was happy all over. If it were at all possible my lady parts would detach themselves and lap the room in celebration. Date number three was better than I had even allowed myself to lecherously fantasise about.

It had also given me a worrying glimpse of a possible shoe fetish. That would need to be watched and stifled as quickly as possible. It could snowball from shoes on during sex to sniffing to wanting me to do all sorts of wrong with my shoes.

The safety of my shoes was paramount.

Edward snuffled lightly at my side before lapsing back into silence. I allowed myself time to really look at the room we were staying in. Like everything in the main house this place was filled with the subtle signs of wealth and prosperity. The sheets may seem plain, but on closer inspection they were insane thread count cotton that felt like you were being wrapped in warm air. The four poster bed alone probably cost the same as my yearly health insurance bill.

I was accustomed to nice things because when Rosalie has a copy of your credit card information, and the knowledge that the amount of money in your various savings accounts meant you, your children and your grandchildren need never work, nice things have a habit of appearing at your door. I couldn't ever admonish her for it either because, invariably, the deliveries consisted of items that I never knew existed but could not live without once I had them.

I tried to keep my wealth a secret from people because they look at you differently when they know. It makes no difference when you tell them that you inherited the money and would return it all for another chance to speak with your beloved grandparents. That explanation doesn't stop you from being categorised differently, whether they are aware they're doing it or not.

It was something I would have to admit to Edward, not that I think he would react like some of the jackasses had in days gone by. It's amazing how quickly a man will back off if you have more money than them. I shook my head to rid the men of the past from my head and gave a little sigh when my gaze focused on Edward.

He was sleeping on his stomach, one arm curled under him and the other thrown across me. His back was bare and I wanted to touch him but was scared he would wake up. His hair, well, it was the definition of sex hair and long rambling prose should be written about it.

The overwhelming urge to pee hit me so I scrambled to remove myself from under his arm without waking him. The floor was surprisingly warm under my bare feet and I padded to the bathroom, stopping to grab my bag on the way. Usually it was Edward who was awake first, this time I would surprise him with minty fresh breath. I brushed my teeth with more vigour than was technically required, the foam spilling from my mouth and leaving me with foamy fangs. I giggled at myself in the mirror. Clawing my hands I growled at my reflection.

"I want to suck your blood! Ah-ah-ah! Raaaaar!"

"What are you doing?" Edward's voice, still gritty and soft from sleep, shocked me and I dropped my toothbrush in the sink with a clatter.

I used the mirror to look behind me and I was thankful I was leaning into the counter because my knees almost buckled. He was only wearing a pair of the tight boxers he favours that basically shoved his junk front and centre. One of his hands was scrunched into his hair, his face screwed up against the fresh light of the day and he was leaning against the door frame on his forearm.

"I was, um, being a vampire?" I scrunched my face up, feeling the blood rush to it as I hung my head in shame. His feet slapped off the tiled floor and his arms bundled me back into his chest. I was conscious of his head dipping down and felt the thrill of contentment as he kissed along my shoulder with a chuckle.

"You're pretty adorable." My earlobe was sucked into his mouth and I shivered in his arms.

"I would have said too easily amused." I mumbled, letting my head fall back against his chest as his hands roamed across my body, smoothing against the silk of the jammies the girls had packed for me.

"I really like these shorts." He let his fingers brush across the thin barrier between them and the Holy Land.

"They're bloomers." Why I felt the need to correct him on this fact I have no idea. Maybe I was into self-sabotage. A chuckle rumbled in his chest and he stretched for the washcloth to wipe the still present toothpaste from my face.

"My turn to be a vampire." I turned to get out of his way but his hands caught my hips and he lifted me onto the counter before edging my legs open to accommodate him. I handed him the toothpaste while he wet his toothbrush. His eyes didn't waver once they locked onto mine, we gazed at each other as he languidly brushed his teeth. Occasionally he would grin, the motion pushing foam out of his mouth and in no time flat he had an impressive set of toothpaste fangs.

"Wow, that's a really sexy look." I smirked then squealed when his mouth swooped down onto my neck and he bit down gently.

"Got some sort of vampire fetish have you?" He asked when my fingers raked through his hair and I groaned.

"No more than you have a shoe fetish." I countered when his mouth covered my nipple through my vest and teased it into a stiff peak.

"It's not a fetish. It's a curiosity." He mumbled against me before pulling away and frowning at the white marks he left behind on the dark silk. I looked down and shrugged, tugging it over my head and tossing it behind him. I tugged at his boxers and he rid himself of them in seconds, his erection springing free and into my waiting hands.

I dragged my curled hand to his tip and back again, basking in the noises escaping his throat. I lifted my hips when he tugged on my bloomers. His hands wrapped around the underside of my thighs, fingers digging into my flesh as he pulled me closer to the edge of the counter, his hips spreading my legs further. His fingers slid into my folds, groaning I pushed forward eagerly, relishing the thought of him moving inside me again.

Last night had been an exquisite session of remembering that first night, his strength and masculinity overpowering me and making me need him in the most primal of ways. His body moving above mine, his head in the crook of my neck and his dick filling me were the only things in the world that mattered in that moment with the exception of the baby that I was carrying. The baby that was made when we gave in to our baser instincts.

That abandoning of pretence could be the best thing that has ever happened to either of us.

I clung on to his neck when he thrust into me, the stimulation of the entrance sending me spiralling close to orgasm before he had moved again. His hips circled, pulling him out then forcing him back in. I moaned loudly, the noise echoing through the bathroom.

The acoustics in here were pretty impressive.

Leaning back with my right hand I gripped the first solid thing that came to hand tightly. If I had any upper body strength at all the tap I used for leverage would be in trouble. My left hand dug into his shoulder, pushing and pulling like it made any difference to the speed of his hips. Dropping his head to my chest he pulled my nipple into his mouth, the remnants of toothpaste bringing a unique sensation with it.

I rocked towards him to meet his thrusts and soon I was riding high on the fuzzy excitement of orgasm, the tremors of which caused me to rip my hand away from the tap and into his hair to tug it roughly. I pulsed around him when he shoved roughly back inside and emptied himself into me.

A thin sheen of sweat covered us both. I sat up and wrapped my arms around him while he reached behind me to turn off the tap I had managed to turn on.

"That was an exciting incentive to brush your teeth." He muttered into my shoulder as he grabbed the washcloth.

"Not sure they could use it in the advertising aimed at school kids though." I joked when he pulled away and crouched between my legs, using the warm cloth to wipe me.

"Yeah, I think that would be frowned upon." We laughed together until I bounced down from the counter and hopped about with wide eyes.

"Ohmigod. What the hell?"

"Bella? What is it?" I grabbed a clean cloth and quickly threw it between my legs.

"You didn't wash off the bloody toothpaste!" I yelled, half laughing half scowling. Edward dropped to his knees and howled with laughter so I threw the cloth at him and edged away while he walked over to me on his knees.

"I'm sorry." He looked up at me, eyes swimming with laughter tears and I huffed, crossing my arms across my chest. "Really, really sorry."

I reached the side of the bath, with nowhere left to go Edward caught up with me and rubbed his scruffy chin and jaw across the soft skin of my belly, his hands on the cheeks of my ass.

The ass touching felt so good I almost forgot why I was in the huff. Ignoring my petulance Edward spoke into my belly button.

"Morning Sim', hope Mommy yelling didn't wake you up." His hands moved back around to my belly to stroke across it. "What's that you say?" He asked, looking up at me and I couldn't supress my still somewhat put out smile. "Yes, I think you're right. Uh huh, ok ok, I will."

"Well?" I quirked an eyebrow, my smile softened.

"He told me to not be a dick and you wouldn't have to yell at me." He stood up and kissed me.

"Some potty mouth our child has."

"He must get it from your side of the family. He told me to tell you something too."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" I nuzzled into his neck and felt him take a deep breath and swallow before he said the words that I hoped were about to be thrown out into the open for appraisal and reciprocation.

"I love you."

"That's handy then."

"Why's that?" I kissed his Adams apple because it was the closest thing to my mouth.

"Because I love you too."

~X~X~

Rosalie gripped my hand like I was the only thing between her and some sort of fiery vengeance type death. Emmett had her hugged in close to his chest in an embrace designed to be both reassuring and to keep her upright. Edward eyed us warily when we walked through the automatic doors to my doctor's waiting room. I quickly waved Jasper over, unpeeled her fingers from mine and connected them with Jasper's hand.

Even though this was a joyous and exciting trip to the doctor for us all, Rosalie's irrational fear of anything medical was controlling her. I begged her to wait for us in the car, or at home even, but she steadfastly refused.

"I'm not going to be fear's bitch." She had huffed as Emmett rolled his eyes and I stifled a giggle.

Rose was the strongest and most wilful person I knew and I was more than a little fascinated at seeing her struggle in medical situations.

I'm fully aware this makes me an incredibly bad friend but I couldn't help it.

Not even hot doctors could alleviate her fears and hot doctors usually perk her right up.

My very own hot doctor hung back with Alice, both of them confused by the change in Rose. Jasper managed to sooth the look of terror from Rose's face and I approached the desk to let them know I was there for my scan.

"Your friend over there ok?" The woman behind the desk asked kindly and I nodded, lowering my voice.

"She's terrified of anything medicine related with the exception of hot doctors."

"Like Dr Cullen? Every woman in the hospital has a crush on him." She winked at me conspiratorially and my expression fell blank as she eyed me with curiosity. Her face brightened when she looked over my shoulder and I felt an arm snake around my waist.

"Everything alright, love?" He kissed my cheek.

"Everything's fine." I smiled, still thrilled at even the slightest of touches from him. "Isabella Swan for Dr Santiago." I winked at the nurse and walked back to our friends with Edward's hand on the small of my back.

Every woman in the hospital may have a crush on him but it's me that he loves. It's me that he whispers the words to in the darkness when we are drifting off to sleep in each other's arms.

I kept repeating that to myself when I felt the jealousy threaten to bubble up. It's flattering that other women have the hots for my man. But I'm not above cutting a bitch if she steps out of line.

I have pregnancy hormones swirling through my blood. I could get away with it.

We must have looked like an odd bunch, we were all touching in some capacity or another. It was a tame Human Centipede. Emmett and Jasper were holding Rose's hands as she sat white faced and stared at a spot on the wall. Alice held Jasper's other hand while holding one of mine and Edward had his arm around my shoulders. We just needed Edward and Emmett to hold hands and we'd be some sort of weird commune looking circle of freaks.

"Swan? You can go through now, the technician is waiting for you." We stood in one massive rustle of clothing. Trooping through I pulled at Edward to move faster. I couldn't wait to meet Simba, to hear his heartbeat, to be able to count his fingers and toes. I knew his eyes wouldn't be open, and Emmett had warned me that I may not be able to see everything very clearly but I didn't care.

It would be his first picture and his family would be seeing him for the first time.

Edward tugged me into his side and gave me a squeeze of excitement.

"Whoa, too many people." The technician said when we piled into the room but Edward took him aside and mumbled quick words into his ear and he let everyone stay.

I hopped up on the table, lifting up the loose sweater I was wearing and bracing myself for the cold gel to be spread on my stomach. With all of the technology in the world you would think that they could warm the stuff up before throwing it over your stomach.

You get warming lube for goodness sake and surely it's the same principle?

Everyone was silent as we went through the formalities and I was getting impatient. I wanted to meet my baby. Edward stood close to the bed, one hand smoothing the hair from my face and the other one returning my impatient death grip.

"Ready?" The technician asked. I nodded eagerly and laughed when every other head in the room did the same thing.

I've always looked at scans and been unimpressed but when he pushed the Doppler firmly down onto my skin and a picture appeared on the screen beside me I was completely fascinated. The tiny beats of a heart filled the room and my eyes pricked with tears. Edward's finger traced the outline of Simba on the screen, he pointed out the head, the feet, the arms, the toes.

"Everything looks good." The tech told us.

"Two legs and two arms, love." Edward murmured into my hair.

"Score." I laughed and complained when he was nudged out of the way, thinking it was Emmett doing the nudging but it wasn't. Rose's fingers tangled with mine, her eyes just as wide with wonder as mine had been.

"Look at that." She whispered in awe, her finger tracing the outline like Edward's had. "Bells, it's amazing."

"I know, right?" We stared at each other, tears spilling down our cheeks.

"I'm…I just…I fucking love it already." We hugged each other tightly, sobbing and laughing and not caring that the sticky stuff on my stomach was ruining her outfit. "Isn't technology a wonderful thing?" The colour was returning to her face and she let me go to let Edward back in, turning to Emmett she grinned, completely back to being herself. "I want one."

Emmett blanched and laughed, not entirely sure she was serious.

"Right now?"

"No, but one day soon." She slid under his arm and kissed his cheek, watching him watch the little blur on the screen and absorb the heartbeat echoing through the room.

Edward kissed my temple, whispering in my ear.

"That's the heartbeat _we_ built."

The tech wrapped up the scan, letting us know about the DVD we would get and giving us the pictures for our fridge. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realised Jasper was no longer in the room. I assumed he would be fine with the happiness floating about and was worried that he wasn't there anymore.

"Hey, where's Jasper?"

"He's crying like a little girl in the hallway."

X~X~X

Having passed the mythical three month stage and having tangible proof that the baby was in my belly and not just my head was a relief. It also meant that I was going to have to face reality quick smart and the bubble I had managed to build around Edward and I, and to a lesser extent the rest of the gang, was going to have to be burst. Our parents needed to be told, our work places needed to be told and preparations were going to have to be made.

There was so much to do. I liked to live as an ostrich, my head in the sand up until the very last. As an effective organiser at work I feel like I have to balance it out in my personal life by being a scatterbrain at times.

A few days after the scan I was still clinging to the bubble and back to work where nobody knew. I wanted to tell Angela first, it was a courtesy every Work Wife should have. I was in before her as usual, booting up my computer I wandered along to the stationery cupboard to stroke the mini bull clips and post its.

I peeled off a post it and grabbed a pen, making a list of the people who were important enough to be told and not just left to find out. Feeling pleased with my burst of organisation I opened the door fast only to frighten the life out of Angela as she walked past. I burst into giggles, apologising and hooking my arm through hers to pull her into my office.

"Feeling somewhat impish this morning are you?" She enquired, giving my ponytail a gentle tug and taking the seat opposite, eyeing the massive coffee sitting in the middle of the desk. I nodded my head and she snatched for it like Gollum snatching for the One Ring.

"Somewhat, yes." I grinned, not entirely sure how I was going to broach the subject but fully aware that I was most likely going to just blurt it out.

"So, how are things? We haven't really had a chance to hang out lately." She sipped delicately at the coffee and watched me over the rim of the cup. It clicked then, that she already knew but was waiting for me tell her. I _knew_ she was a witch.

"How long have you known?"

"Known what?" She arched an eyebrow at me and grinned with genuine pleasure. I rifled through my bag, put the picture on the desk and pushed it over to her.

"Witch." I smiled, shaking my head.

"I didn't know for sure, but I thought something was going on. Tiredness, days off, medical appointments." She counted the reasons out on her raised hand. "Call it deductive reasoning. Do you know what it is yet?"

"No, we aren't going to. We had the scan yesterday, it was amazing…to hear the heartbeat was just…we were all in tears." I laughed, remembering Emmett pretending he wasn't and then picking on Jasper who was full on weeping in the hallway and cursing us all for being so damn emotional.

"So, hot doctor is all in?" I grabbed a bottle of water and drank some down greedily as I nodded.

"Thankfully." We grinned at each other.

"Congratulations, Bella. You're going to be a great Mom." She told me with blatant belief in her statement. "You're going to have to tell Jessica."

"I know." I dropped my head into my hands and mock sobbed before laughing.

Jessica Stanley was one of those women who were obviously queen of their high school but have turned bitter when life on her and didn't give her exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it. She was head of HR and someone I have had to speak to on more occasions than I ever would have liked. There was always a biting undertone and double meaning to everything she said.

Her main issue with me was the date I went on with Mike. Every flimsy excuse she could think of had her up here, simpering and batting her eyelashes at him. I would applaud the union if I didn't think it would drain whatever spirit Mike actually had in him. Five years into that marriage and the only spirit to be found would be vodka.

"I'm going to put off that visit until after I come back from telling my Dad." She nodded in understanding.

"Don't blame you. Thanks for the coffee." She rose and gave me a hug across the shoulders before trotting out of my office, leaving me to get as much work done as possible before I was off work yet again. At least these were official holidays instead of personal and sick days.

I worked solidly through the morning, waving Angela off when she asked me if I wanted an early lunch with her and Ben. After promising we would do something when I came back they disappeared with Ben calling quiet congratulations over to me. I grabbed a sandwich from the sandwich boy, a kind of flirty skater looking dude with longer eyelashes than me. I looked forward to the rattle of his trolley every day. The sandwich remained on my desk, ignored and pathetic.

"Hey, we found someone looking for you downstairs." Angela popped her head around my door and I jumped. "If this is Edward then kudos to you, my lucky friend." She stuck her tongue out at me and opened the door wide enough for me to see Jasper chatting to Ben by the elevator.

"That's not Edward." I laughed, loud enough for Jasper to hear and turn his head in my direction. "It's Edward's brother in-law."

"Well, damn, is Edward hotter than that?" She gestured manically with her hand towards Jasper, just in case I didn't understand who she was talking about.

"I, personally, think Edward has the edge." I murmured when we walked over to Jasper. "But _his_ wife would beg to differ." I nodded toward Jasper.

Jasper swooped and planted a noisy obnoxious kiss on my cheek and bundled me into his signature hug when it came to me, leaving my feet dangling as he rocked me for a second before releasing me. He gave me a quick appraisal, almost too quick for me to notice but I did and planted my hands on my hips.

"Has Edward sent you to check up on me?"

"No, I came of my own volition, wondered if you wanted to get some lunch." I started to feel a little serene, narrowing my eyes at him I mouthed stop before doing introductions. I grabbed my bag and he slung a friendly arm around my shoulder as we walked out of the building. He chatted easily, making me laugh with tales of writing frustration.

"I'm craving a Counter Burger, you in?"

"Sounds great." My stomach grumbled in agreement. I was eager for us to get seated and served because I could tell there was another reason for his impromptu lunch visit aside from boredom.

He hummed and hawed over his order until I kicked his shin and told him to get on with it already. Finally we had our burgers and I prepared to give him the third degree. I wasn't a Police Chief's daughter for nothing, I had picked up some skills over the years.

"Have you seen the papers today?" He asked before I could embark on my inquisition. I shook my head, popping some cucumber in my mouth. "There are a couple of things in it that Alice and I thought I should maybe talk to you about before you saw Edward."

"What kind of things? You're making me nervous."

"There's a gossipy piece of shit about you and Edward." He told me bluntly. "Which involves Emmett and Rose too."

"What? Why? Why would a paper feasibly be interested in me and Edward?" I poked at my burger, appetite lost. I was used to the gossip rags spreading lies about Emmett, it came with the territory for him and we had all made a pact to ignore it unless it was particularly bad and then Rose would turn into Scary-Bitch-Lawyer: Guaranteed To Make You Cry.

"Well, I don't know how much he has told you about their parents, but they are a pretty big deal. Old money, society pages, philanthropists, pillars of Seattle."

"I didn't know." He nodded, like it wasn't a surprise.

"Alice and Edward, well, they grew up with that shit and they hate it so I'm not surprised you didn't know. I thought maybe you would have googled him, but it's probably a good thing you didn't."

"I still don't understand, though. Why would the papers even care?"

"Someone made the connection with the Cullen name and sold information on your date at Laurent's place, the usual page six son-of-a-prominent-figure trash. They made vague allusions to your pregnancy, so it was obviously someone working there." I cast my mind back and I remembered the waiter, eagerly asking me questions that I was happy to answer because I felt safe there.

"Asshole." I spat, startling Jasper. "It was the waiter."

"Right." He nodded. "Someone also made the connection between you and Emmett."

"That connection is easy to research."

"Yes, it's also very easy to lie about. The news is out about the wedding being postponed, there's a picture from your birthday of you sitting on his knee at the cages."

"Right, so I'm the slut who is breaking up an engagement and running about with an entitled son of Seattle?"

"Exactly." I sat back in the booth, letting out a breath and slumping down. Jasper watched me carefully, waiting for something. I shrugged.

"Papers make up nonsense to increase circulation, it isn't something I can control and I'm not going to endanger the health of my child by getting stressed about it." I grabbed my burger, my appetite returning threefold, and bit off a huge chunk, groaning happily at the taste. "This is awesome." I gestured at my plate then at Jasper's urging him to eat.

"I wasn't expecting you to react like this." He chuckled, a little relieved.

"Is that why Alice sent you? You should maybe swing by Rose's office on the way home. I may be alright, if slightly annoyed, but she will be out for blood."

"I stopped by to see her earlier. She's out for blood alright. I need a shot of Jack and a nap." He laughed. "You've made it easier though, all the happiness really makes a difference."

"Glad I could help." I grinned at him. I _was_ glad I could help. I couldn't even comprehend what it felt like to be Jasper, picking up on everyone's emotions. He most likely wasn't even sure what his own feelings were when he was a room full of people. "So, tell me something…did you freaky mojo your way into Alice's heart?" He laughed loudly, making some people turn and glare but he didn't care.

"You think I needed the help, darlin'? My southern charm, dashing good looks and obvious sex appeal did all the work for me." He smirked. "Besides, I can't mess with free will. Nobody would do something they weren't already going to do just because I projected a feeling onto them."

"Good to know."

"Ah, Bella, were you scared?"

"No, I trust you. I just like to know that my will is my own." I patted his hand reassuringly.

"Good, sometimes we non-Cullens have to stick together in the face of their overwhelming powers of persuasion…it's good to have an ally."

Something told me that he didn't mind being overwhelmingly persuaded by Alice, he obviously adored her. He dropped me back at work, locking eyes with Mike as we passed and he tensed slightly before giving me an elaborate good bye with more swinging hugs and leaving me laughing at his retreating form.

X~X~X

I spent most of the day mulling over the papers, refusing to look at them even though Angela very subtly left them within reading distance if I needed them. A large portion of my afternoon was spent fending off calls from other news outlets trying to make a story and trying to make me sell my story on Emmett. Those calls were disconnected as soon as I realised who they were. Rosalie called several times, yelling about those "cock sucking assholes". Mainly it was to vent her rage so I could continue to work while she ranted about libel and slander and injunctions and damages and other things I didn't really have a clue about.

When it wasn't Rosalie or the media it was Emmett apologising for putting me in this position. I told him I didn't care, we knew this came with the territory and it was just news to us that Edward had the same kind of interest in a different world than sports. Maybe I _should_ Google him, just to prepare myself for the future.

It felt like an invasion of his privacy but I already had my browser up when that thought ran freely through my mind. It was quickly followed by the prospect of maybe being able to source some pictures of him from his ice skating days and, frankly, who doesn't want to see their boyfriend all Ice Princessed up?

I typed his name in and hit enter fast, like I was afraid it was going to burn me. I was only a little disappointed when nothing salacious was immediately noticeable. Not that I wanted him to have a murky playboy past, but some extra insight into him would be good. Scrolling through the first page I was already bored and wished I had not even thought about doing it.

I felt guilty.

I clicked on the images link and was confronted by his parents. Daddy Cullen was a looker. He was gorgeous. I peered at the image on screen and saw the tight line of his smile, a smile that didn't reach his eyes and shivered. Sensing this was the man Edward dealt with in private, the man who projected an almost perfect image to those who don't look too closely. Edward's Mom looked softer, more worn down by life.

It's easy to make assumptions based on photographs I told myself and clicked back on the browser. You just have to look at the picture of me and Emmett on my birthday to know that pictures do sometimes lie. I was hovering over the close button when the last line of the page caught my eye.

_Edward Cullen divorces wife after six weeks of marriage. _

I should click close and be done. This could be any Edward Cullen in the world. There has to be more than one. I looked at the source and registered it was a Seattle society page.

Shit.

I rubbed my belly and thought.

"What do you think, Sim'? Should Mommy read about Daddy's divorce?"

I already knew the answer.

Yes, Mommy should abso-fucking-lutely read about Daddy's divorce.

The article was about four lines long. Detailing the dates, the lack of longevity and the pall it cast over his Father's announcement of a charitable ball to raise funds for a new wing at the hospital.

Awesome.

I dropped my head gently to the desk and stared out the open door at the elevator. It was important that I don't overreact. I had to think about this logically. I hate women who go storming in with a quarter of the facts and then it blows up into a massive and easily avoidable misunderstanding.

He was twenty-two which means I was finishing up high school. It was ten years ago. Six weeks was an incredibly short amount of time by anyone's standards, unless you're Britney Spears, but they could have been together for a while before that. There had to be a reason he never mentioned this before.

_Yeah, because you have a knack of making everything about you._

Stupid voice in my head.

Angela scared me out of my reverie. She appeared at my door out of nowhere looking a little harassed. She shook her head at me and crouched down to my eye level to look at me with concern.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah."

"I don't believe you. Another hot man is looking for you and if this one _isn't_ Edward and is not as _hot_ as Edward then I'm reporting you to the Woman's Commission for the heinous crime of bogarting all the hotties." I snorted with laughter at her and lifted my head off the desk just as Edward appeared behind her.

His smile was quick to come when he saw me sitting behind my desk, his eyes roamed around the room before coming back to rest on me. There was worry he was trying to hide, he knew about the papers and was concerned that I was upset. I couldn't contain the feeling that always built in me when I saw him, when I realised again that he was just as in love with me as I am with him. It felt like I was being filled with air, it was such a joyous feeling that I could never stop the laugh that signalled my happiness.

"Angela, this is Edward. Edward, this is Angela."

"Ah, the Work Wife." He nodded in understanding and held out his hand.

"Ah, the Real Life Wife." She countered with, clasping his hand and shaking it before bidding us goodbye. She walked backwards out of the office, giving me a double thumbs up and mouthing "nice!" at me to make me laugh.

"I totally saw that in the window." Edward laughed, closing the distance between us and kneeling beside me. "Are you alright?"

"Tough day." I closed my eyes when the back of his hand brushed the apple of my cheek. "I Googled you."

"Did you?" He sighed.

"I didn't mean to, well, I did. But I knew it was wrong and I hate myself." I sighed.

"Don't hate yourself, I Googled you too."

"You did?"

"Sure." He caressed my face again, gazing into my face and being completely honest. "I was bored, I Googled everyone." He chuckled.

"You were married." I tried to avoid the accusing tone that bled out, wincing when I registered it.

"Yes. I was. Not for long, I thought it was love but I know now that wasn't true. You can't love someone without trust and I never really had that with her."

"You should have told me. We aren't operating a normal courtship, we've moved faster and have more at stake. Ordinarily it wouldn't have mattered, but because _you_ matter then it's something I should have known."

"Would it have changed anything if I had told you before?" He asked, resting his head on my lap to let me scrunch my fingers through his hair.

"I wouldn't be feeling like this." I told him honestly. "I don't want to overreact, Edward, because it was ten years ago and has no bearing on who you are now and how invested in us you are. But I'm jealous of her."

"I wish you weren't. It was a mistake to get married, we thought it could save our relationship."

It was easy for him to wish I wasn't jealous of this woman, in an ideal world I would be above such emotion. But I'm pregnant and a fairly normal woman. Show me another one of those who claims to not be jealous of their gorgeous boyfriend's ex-wife and I'll show you a liar.

"Call me a bitch if you want, but I'm glad it didn't save it."

"Are you mad at me?"

"I was never mad at you." I rubbed my fingers across his stubble. "It's improbable to know everything about a person but that's major information. You are legally divorced, right?"

"Yep, signed and notarised."

"Then it's not important." I nudged his head off my lap to gather my things, he played around with my desk tidy and stationery before abruptly standing and waving his ringing phone at me. I was pulled into a quick embrace when he left the office.

"Meet you in the lobby."

Before I left I stopped by Angela's desk to say goodbye. I wouldn't see her for a week and when I was on holiday I missed the girl. She stood to give me a hug and further congratulations on the baby.

"Hey, you have something on your back." I spun to let her get at it. Knowing my luck I've spent the entire day with a sticker for Counter Burger on my back or something. She flashed a yellow post it at me before reading it out loud. "Edward hearts Bella."

My stomach flipped and that feeling of air and happiness filled my chest cavity again.

"That boy does love his post its."

X~X~X

**A/N: Read, Review and Recommend please :)**

**Thanks to all who have reviewed in the past, it actually does mean so much to receive feedback.  
**

**ladyeire3 is my pre-reader and it's her birthday this weekend so I wish her the lie in that she really really wants.  
**

**A couple of fic rec's for you:**

_**Love in My Box - cosmoandmarvar**_

_**Remember Me - isakassees**_

_**The Cullen Campaign - belladonna1472**_

_**What Speaks in Darkness - cosmogirl7481**_

**Some quality writing right there.**

**So, if you ever have questions and things you can PM me, I'm on twitter (ranting about pretty much everything except Twilight) WithAplomb, and I have a formspring (that for some reason someone tried to hack into...how mental is that?) /WithAplomb.**

**Next chapter is started and if I have something ready I might submit a teaser to the fictionators website, so keep an eye on that if that floats your boat. **

**See you guys next time :D  
**


	13. When Charlie Gets His Gun

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or the Saga…I do own a kick ass pair or Converse courtesy of my brother. **

**Chapter 13 – Edward**

**When Charlie Gets His Gun**

"You should know a couple of things about Charlie." Bella informed me. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye and returned my concentration back to the road.

"Like what?" She shifted in her seat and planted her feet directly onto the dash in such a casually familiar manner that it almost made me too happy to register that HER FEET WERE ON MY DASH. I reached out my hand and rubbed up her shin, for some reason she was wearing shorts. It was nearing October and she was too hot, apparently, to wear something that wouldn't distract me while I was driving. They were little jean shorts, made out of an old pair, that let me ogle her thighs more than I should when in control of heavy machinery.

"Well, he's Chief of Police."

"I knew that." She stretched over and cupped her hand around the back of my neck, softly stroking the sensitive skin.

"So, he's good with guns." My heart stuttered. "He's killed before."

"Has he killed a boyfriend before?"

"Not to my knowledge." She frowned and tilted her head. "But I never did see Tyler again after our date." She rolled her eyes at me.

"Very droll." I replied, rolling my own eyes.

"He's a member of the NRA. So am I, by the way."

"Do you own a gun?"

"I'm a woman who lives alone, my father is a cop. Of course I own a gun."

"You can't even throw a balled up piece of paper in a trash can accurately." I snorted, thinking about how awful an aim she must be.

"Honey, I'd be able to outshoot you any day." Her fingers squeezed the back of my neck affectionately. "Anyway, he'll probably clean his guns in front of you just to freak you out."

"Thanks for the warning."

"If he asks you what teams you support you can say anything so long as it's the Seahawks and the Mariners. He does not take kindly to people who don't support Emmett." She smiled. "Neither do I, mind you."

"I'm pro Emmett, don't worry."

"If he asks you how we met, maybe we don't say it was a one night stand?"

"Have you already come up with a story?"

"No, just…I don't want him to think I'm a whore." She mumbled, tucking her chin down to her chest with a sigh.

"Bella! You are _not_ a whore. You say whatever you want about how we met, I'll back you up."

I almost pulled the car over to sternly lecture Bella about the corrosive effects of calling yourself names but she peeked through her lashes at me with a small smile and I knew she didn't need it. I had no idea just how much information was going be imparted during our drive to Forks. Our bags were bundled carelessly in the back, Bella had control of the music and I was more content than I had been in a long time. The sacrifice required to manage a cluster of days off together was going to be worth it.

"I've informed him that you will _not_ be sleeping on the pull out bed downstairs."

"So, you do actually want him to shoot me on sight?" She laughed at my worry. I really loved making her laugh. The sound of it sent happy messages to my brain.

"He's got to get used to the fact that I'm an adult. Besides, when he learns he is going to be a Grandpa his belief in my virginity is going to be pretty shattered."

"And his belief that I am the defiler of his precious virgin daughter will increase. Do you see the correlation, Bella? Are you trying to kill me off for the insurance?"

"Pft, like I need your money." She waved her hand in the air like it was the last thing in the world she needed. "There are things I'm more attached to than your bank balance, Cullen. I'm pretty sure my own actually matches yours anyway." She held her breath, waiting for my reaction to her comment.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I'm a trust fund baby." She admitted and I wasn't surprised. Her house, car and designer wardrobe were indicators of access to more money than an accountant would normally make. Plus, I was bored one night and Googled her. Along with Alice, Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie.

Jasper has some pretty terrifying fan sites dedicated to him.

"I already knew that, and I also know that money isn't something either of us cares very much about. Maybe because we have money we can say that, but it just means we're truly on an equal footing." She beamed at me in response.

"I tried to give Charlie money, to buy him a new house and things but he refused." She shook her head. "He said it was my money and he didn't want a dime. I've been transferring money directly into his bank account for the past ten years."

"He probably hasn't spent a cent."

"Probably. Can I have your phone?"

"Sure, it's in my pocket." She waited for a second before raising an eyebrow at me to encourage me to hand it to her. "My hands should be on the ten and two positions at all time when the vehicle is in motion. You want my phone? You dive in and get it yourself."

"Your eyes should also be on the road at all times, but they've been transfixed by my legs for the past thirty minutes." She plunged her hand into my pocket and rummaged around slowly on purpose, her fingers searching and brushing against my thigh and dick.

"You're right, I'm pretty distracted. I should pull over and take care of that."

"Do whatever you need to do. If you need to pull over and take yourself in hand you do that." She sniggered at me, waving my phone at the side of my face. I heard her slide the lock open and watched as she started pressing the screen and smirking.

"Seriously?"

"Yup." She waved my phone at me again. "Jasper says hi."

X~X~X

"You'll run down the battery." I griped, swiping at my phone as Bella batted my hand back to my side of the car.

"Ah, shut up already." She grinned playfully but put the phone down. "Do you think you can tell yet?" She rubbed her still flat stomach. "I think I'm getting a little bit pouchy." She pursed her lips as she poked her belly.

"I don't think you are." I put my hand on her stomach, spreading my fingers wide and feeling no difference from the first time. "It's weird, I feel like I should be able to feel his heartbeat through your tummy."

"I know, I keep thinking I should be able to feel it too." Her other hand came to rest on top of mine. "There's a turning coming up, take it. I want to show you something."

I did what Bella told me to. I took the turning instead of following the road straight to Forks. I couldn't get over how green everything was here. There were trees and moss and grass and every other thing that comes in variations of green and brown in nature. I was a city boy, the only time I encountered this much green was the time in college when Jasper and I experimented with becoming stoners.

The proper road ended pretty quickly and turned into two bald stripes in the grass. I followed Bella's directions and eventually we found ourselves at the top of a hill. She pulled me out of the car and pointed across a forest. If I squinted I could just make out the tops of houses in the distance.

"That's Forks." She held my hand and leaned into my side, her head resting on my shoulder. "Back this way is Seattle." She turned us around and pointed back the way we came while I nodded and waited. We stood in silence, her body leaning against mine and trusting that I would keep her upright. The sun was only occasionally blighted by white clouds as we stared into the distance.

Bella squeezed my hand before wrapping it around her waist. Her arms encompassed my waist and she hugged me tightly.

"When Emmett went away to college I used to come up here a lot. I could still see home, but I used to stare in the direction of Seattle and wonder what he was doing and whether he missed me as much as I missed him."

"I'm sure he did." I told her, kissing the top of her head.

"Yeah, I know he did. He came home every second weekend and he never would have done that if I wasn't here. He knew I needed to see that he wasn't leaving me the way my Mom did. Our other friends never really understood, they didn't get it. They thought I should be over it already, but none of their parents had looked them in the eye and told them they loved them only to up and leave that afternoon."

I made a mental note to buy Emmett anything he wanted to thank him for seeing how much Bella needed him. I would happily spend every day doing his bidding for taking care of her before I was in her life.

I knew I would never take his place in Bella's life, I didn't want to. I was carving my own unique place and I meant something different to her. Not something better, but something new and just as good.

"Emmett is my favourite person." I admitted to her while we stared at the passing clouds. "He took care of you and I can't ever thank him enough for doing that."

"I don't really need taken care of, but it's nice to know people love me and would do anything for me. I know that if I told Emmett and Rose I had killed somebody their first question would be about where to hide the body."

"Is that a warning?" I laughed nervously, remembering the afternoon I was left with Rosalie on Bella's birthday and her telling me if I fucked around with Bella she would kill me herself. It was such a clichéd best friend threat but I had looked into her blue eyes and seen the truth. She wouldn't hesitate in ending me if I hurt Bella.

"Don't be silly." She laughed and shook her head, tapping my chest with her hand.

Bella pulled me across to my car and she sat on the hood, tugging my belt and pulling me between her legs to hold me tightly. I shrugged off my horror at her sitting on the hood of my car and hooked my hands under her thighs to shift her down so we could fit together better.

"You're freaking out about me sitting on your car, aren't you?"

"No." I squeaked and cleared my throat. "No, not at all."

"Liar." She giggled against my chest. My hands slid up her thighs and stopped as I hit the denim of her shorts. As soon as the thought crossed my mind I couldn't shake the image of me screwing her as she sat on my car. I felt myself go hard and I knew she could feel it. I knew this because she started shifting her hips against me.

"Did you used to bring boys up here?" I pushed my hips against her and she pushed firmly back.

"No." She shook out her hair and tipped her head back, staring back up at the clouds. I pushed my hands under the hem of her t-shirt and rolled it up under her breasts. I bent my head down and kissed her stomach, hoping that Simba was having a nap because ever since that conversation with Jasper I couldn't help but be worried whenever I went near where he was going to come out.

"This place was always mine." She told me when I licked across her skin. I popped open the button on her shorts, pulling down the zip and she mirrored the action on my jeans without taking her eyes away from the sky.

"Bella, look at me." She pulled her head forward and smiled serenely.

"Do you know how gorgeous you are?" She blurted and I felt my face flame from the unexpected compliment. "Did you just blush?"

"No. Shut up." I mumbled, letting my jeans fall to the ground and kicking them aside. Bella jumped off the car and tossed her shorts on top of my jeans. She pushed me onto the car and straddled me without warning, pushing down onto my cock and wrapping her arms around my neck.

My hips jerked up, pushing me fully into her, and my mouth attached to hers. I slid my tongue into the mouth I knew so well, our moans being lost to the breaths managing to escape and disappear into the breeze. She moved against me, finding a rhythm that could easily see me lose my shit well before her. I buried a hand into her hair, anchoring her to me, while I buried fingers into her folds and provided her with some extra friction.

We came together, under the blue sky and on top of my car. Bella's forehead rested on mine as we fought to regain control of our breathing. Her cheeks were a light pink and the sun illuminated the hidden spectrum of colour in her hair. Her lips were swollen slightly from our kisses and moisture pooled in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" I brushed the hair away from her face. "Did I hurt you?"

"No." She shook her head and laughed. "Of course you didn't hurt me." She cupped my face in her hands and fluttered fresh kisses against my lips. "I never knew it could feel this way, this new and this important."

"What?" I wasn't sure if she meant sex or not. I knew it had never felt so gratifying for me with anyone else, but I didn't know how it felt to her.

She shook her head before she answered, an almost self-conscious smile played on her lips and she sighed before looking back up at the sky then back at me.

"Love."

X~X~X

I parked the car beside Bella's Dad's police cruiser. I removed my hand from her knee because he could probably see us sitting in the car and I didn't want it to look like I was feeling her up in front of his house.

"Are you nervous?" Bella grinned at me.

"No." I shook my head.

I was terrified.

It's an entirely different emotion.

"Come on." Bella sprang from the car before I could stop her. I watched her run up the stairs and cross the porch in two steps before throwing open the front door and running straight into her father's already open arms. They hugged for a few seconds before pulling apart and smiling at each other bashfully, obviously not used to showing quite as much emotion.

I got out of the car before I looked like an asshole just sitting and staring at them. Bella pulled Charlie down to meet me, introducing us and elbowing her Dad to take my outstretched hand. He eyed me up without shame, trying to ascertain without me saying anything other than "nice to meet you, sir" whether or not I was good enough for his only daughter.

"You took your time, Tink."

"Edward's a careful driver, besides, I wanted to show him my hill." She smiled and he nodded in recognition.

"Any time I couldn't find her in the usual places she was on top of that hill." He told me gruffly from underneath a Magnum P.I looking moustache. Not a lot of people can carry off a 'tache of that magnitude but he wore it impressively well.

We were roughly the same height, about which I was glad. He couldn't try to do the "intimidation with height" thing that some Dads try. I don't even know why I was so nervous about meeting the man. I was an adult for god's sake.

But I knew that if Simba turned out to be a Nala then I would be threatening any man's testicles if they came within three feet of her when she was old enough to date.

Yes, I have double standards. Shoot me, at least one person in this house wants to.

That old enough to date thing was going to be specified quite early on. It would be when she was thirty, and the prospective date had passed the many and varied pre-date tests I would set.

Charlie took Bella's bag from the car and left me to get mine. She shrugged at me and took my hand, walking me into the house she grew up in. It was modest, three bedrooms at most, and one that I wouldn't have minded growing up in. We sat at the kitchen table and I listened as Bella and Charlie talked. She was glowing at being reunited with her Dad and excitedly told him that Emmett and Rose would be along in a few days because he said it wasn't fair that she was getting to visit home without him and insisted Rosalie take some long overdue holiday hours.

Bella and I didn't discuss when exactly she would tell him about the baby, I trusted her to tell him at the right time.

Apparently the right time wasn't within the first hour of being home. She nodded at my bag and picked hers up, telling Charlie we were going to freshen up. He glared at me when I walked past and I felt his eyes on the back of my neck the entire walk up the stairs. My neck tingled and shoulders tensed.

I was waiting for the bullet to shatter my spinal cord.

I shook out the tension when Bella closed her bedroom door and looked around her room. It was a fairly typical teenager's room. Charlie obviously didn't want to mess with the sanctity of a woman's room by changing anything about it.

There were posters tacked up on the wall, mainly featuring Nirvana, Pearl Jam and bands who had been signed to SubPop. Her bed wasn't a full size double but at least it wasn't a single. I would have insisted on the couch had it been a single.

"Like my room?"

"It has been years since I was in a teenage girl's room."

"I'm thankful for that knowledge." She grinned and began pulling her clothes out and piling them untidily into drawers.

"Does your Dad always look at your boyfriends like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like he's looking for the kill shot?" I sat on the edge of her bed, smoothing out the sheets beside me and looking at the rocking chair in the corner of her room.

"To be honest, you're only the second proper boyfriend he has met." She turned her back to me and punched down the clothes she shoved in the drawer to get it to shut. "He knew the first one since he was a kid so it wasn't really an issue." She admitted.

I dropped onto my back, bouncing on the mattress a little and I stared up at her ceiling. Why it had never occurred to me to question Bella about her past boyfriends I have no idea. From the brief information we had imparted regarding past relationships I had assumed there was no one of note from her past. There never seemed to be a major boyfriend figure, but we still knew so little about each other's lives before we became a unit.

I should have told her about Irina, she should have known that I had a failed marriage. It's laughable to even call it that, but written in black and white it's what it was. In reality it was a six week exercise in prolonging the inevitable. Being young could be used as an excuse, but I was an adult nonetheless and knew exactly what I was doing.

Such an asshole.

The mattress moved under me and I felt, rather than saw, Bella kneel on the bed and straddle me. My hands went to her hips to steady her and I continued to stare at the ceiling. There were white dots all over the deep blue paint and I struggled to make the dots connect.

"What's that?" I pointed up and Bella followed the direction of my finger.

"It's the sky at night." She bent down and laid her body on top of mine, her head tucked under my chin. "They light up in the dark and you can see the constellations. It helped me get to sleep after Mom left. I used to gaze up at them, memorising the patterns and counting them until I could get my mind to stop and finally fall asleep."

"Can we do that to the baby's room?" I liked the idea of our child watching the sky.

"Of course. We should go get dinner. Charlie's probably having kittens about us being up her alone." She giggled and sat up, smirking at me as she rubbed her groin against me for no other reason than to be evil. The bed squeaked at the movement and I groaned. I had no intention of actually having sex with Bella while under her father's roof the squeaks of her old bed had completely prohibited that, regardless of my intentions.

~X~X~

We spent the next couple of days hanging out with Charlie. Bella didn't mention the baby and I kept my mouth shut. I tried to impress him with my limited knowledge of fishing on the first morning when we crammed ourselves into his boat. Bella rolled her eyes at me when she speared a worm on a hook and I gagged a little.

"You're a _doctor_." She snickered, throwing Charlie a look that he replicated perfectly.

Fishing, it turns out, is just sitting in a boat, holding a rod and drinking a beer. I slapped the water and watched the fish dance to ripples of us, but I was quickly chastened by Charlie so I didn't do it again. Occasionally Charlie would haul in a fish and it would be ritualistically slaughtered on the floor of the boat as I hung over the side and couldn't watch. Mostly we were silent, Bella would make her Dad chuckle with stories of the crazy things Emmett had done and the ways he had pissed Rosalie off, then we were silent again.

I made a mental note to let them go alone the next morning.

The second night we were sitting in the kitchen, eating a lasagne I had thrown together from the ingredients I had found by rooting through the cupboards while they had been out fishing again. I'm surprised Bella had come home with no fish hook holes in her. She had jumped into my arms in greeting and Charlie looked at me like he was thinking about beating me to death with a kitchen chair.

"This is very good." Charlie conceded, his moustache twitched and I registered with shock that he had just smiled at me.

"Glad you like it."

"Dad?" Bella began nervously and my stomach turned to lead. I knew this was the moment and I hoped to all that was good in the world that I was going to make it out of this conversation alive.

"Yeah?"

"Edward and I have something to tell you." She grinned happily, trying to mask her nervousness but her hand was restricting the blood flow of my own.

"What's that?" He looked at us expectantly. "It can't be a wedding because he hasn't asked me about that like a proper suitor would."

"Well, number one, he wouldn't have to ask you about that because we no longer live in the 1800s and I don't have a dowry." She rolled her eyes and I shook my head at her in a silent plea to not piss the man off. "Number two, it isn't about a wedding."

"What is it then?"

"I'm…well…we…I'm pregnant." She blurted then slammed her free hand over her mouth like she was shocked the information had managed to free itself.

"Congratulations." His moustache twitched at Bella before he stared at me with blank eyes. "Excuse me." He stood up casually and walked from the room. We listened as his boots thumped along the hall, as the jangle of keys echoed through the silence, as a lock was unlocked and a door was opened.

"Oh, shit." Bella jumped up, pulled me to my feet and shoved me behind her with a nervous giggle. "He won't, but he'll make you think…" She muttered cryptically as Charlie came back into the room.

"Bella, please move out of the way."

"Charlie Swan, put that back in the cupboard right now and I'll forgive you." My eyes hadn't left his hand, the shiny metal calling to me like I was a magpie. I nudged Bella out of the way and edged her behind me.

"Sir, this is entirely unnecessary. I realise that this is a shock, but shooting me isn't going to change the fact that I'm in love with your daughter and she is carrying my child…your grandchild."

"Ah, dammit son…you couldn't have just acted a little more terrified?" He chuckled, leaning the shotgun against the wall. "Hell, it isn't even loaded." He reached out and shook my hand.

"Quite the joker, aren't you Dad?" Bella rolled her eyes.

"She told me when we were out on the boat earlier, but I wanted to play with you a little."

I laughed incredulously. They set me up. Absolute bastards.

"Jasper said you'd be fine with a practical joke." Bella grinned.

I was going to put my hands around his throat and squeeze hard when I saw him next.

"I don't like you and Jasper being so tight." I grumbled before hugging her to me in relief. "You don't want to kill me then?"

"I wouldn't go that far, but Bella hasn't been this happy in a long time. You're the reason, you and the baby, so why would I want to be an asshole about that?" He asked, perfectly logically. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." I nodded sincerely and with gratitude that I would be leaving Forks with both my testicles intact.

~X~X~X

Emmett and Rosalie arrived early the next morning, stopping by the Swan house to say hello to Charlie before heading off to the other side of town to his parent's house. News of Bella being pregnant spread quickly through the town and the phone rang off the hook with calls of congratulations from old school acquaintances and family friends.

Before the morning was over a party was planned for that evening down on the reservation where Bella spent a massive amount of time at as a teenager. The majority of her friends lived there through school and a few had moved back after college. It was home to the half-naked guys in all her pictures and I was eager to _not _meet them. After all, I had fantasised about breaking their fingers for daring to touch her.

Bella drove us onto the reservation. I was squashed in the back being the Edward meat in an Emmett and Charlie sandwich. My own reticence at being here was increasing as Emmett and Bella talked excitedly about seeing people they hadn't seen in months. I was being jealous and a bit ridiculous but I couldn't help but worry that I was going to want to physically harm people if they actually touched her.

Judging from the pictures that lived in Bella's house they were a touchy feely group of guys. They had every right to hug their friend, but I was only used to seeing Bella with Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper and Alice.

We stopped outside a bright red wooden house, the air smelled of burning wood and smoke curled through the air from the back of the house. The noise of the car had attracted attention and a group of people appeared from the side of the house. As soon as Bella was clear of the car she was swept away from me in a sea of hugs and whoops of congratulations. Rosalie stuck close to my side, her hand slipping in to mine in an act of reassurance.

"It's weird, but you need to hold it together." She muttered under her breath as she too was swept into hugs and laughter.

I hung back and watched as hand after hand rested on Bella's waist and countless mouths pressed kisses to her cheek and mouth. Her head turned, the breeze catching the ends of her hair and making it swirl around her flushed with happiness face. When she saw me still by the car her arm stretched out and she wiggled her fingers at me to take them. I took her hand and she pulled me into the middle of a circle with a grin.

"Guys, this is Edward." She leaned into me, my arms wrapped around her automatically and I gave a mini wave. "Edward, this is Sam, Emily, Embry, Seth, Leah, Quil, Paul and Jared."

"I'm never going to remember all that." I told them.

"Don't worry, we're going to passive aggressively call you Edmond all night anyway so it's all good." The tallest one told me with a wink before he nodded his head towards the back of the house. "Come on Bella, Billy can't wait to see you again…neither can Jacob." The way he said Jacob cautiously piqued my interest.

"I can't wait to see Billy either." Bella replied, ignoring mention of this Jacob guy completely and pulling my arm across her shoulders while we walked around the house.

As we turned towards the back Bella pulled away from me and rushed to a man in a wheelchair. I could only assume this was Billy, she waved me over and hugged him tight, smiling as something he whispered in her ear. Rosalie pulled me aside before I could reach Bella, her eyes on Emmett as he approached one of the biggest guys I had ever seen in my life. He was just as massive as Emmett, his skin a golden russet colour, his hair jet black and pulled into a ponytail that hung down the centre of his bare back.

His eyes hadn't left Bella since we turned the corner.

"That's Jacob." Rosalie muttered.

"Why is he looking at Bella like he owns her?" My hands curled into fists and relaxed again.

"He was her first boyfriend. He still thinks he has a claim on her." My eyes narrowed as he looked over at us with a sneer.

"I'll happily set him straight on that one." I growled, eager to make it perfectly clear he wasn't to go near Bella by punching it into him.

"Edward, settle down. Male aggression freaks Bella out. Trust that Emmett will keep him in line."

"Male aggression freaks Bella out but she loves watching Emmett play?"

"I don't know how her mind works, Edward, just keep it in mind and keep your fists uncurled." She nudged her hip into mine with a grin and stalked over to Jacob and I swear I saw him wince as she approached.

Bella put her arms around me and nestled her head on my back between my shoulder blades. She swayed me as we stood until I turned round and kissed the tip of her nose because, well, it's an adorable nose.

"Come meet Billy, he wants to make sure you're good enough for me." She rolled her eyes. "I told him it was the other way around but he wouldn't listen."

Bella made the introductions and I was interrogated for a while before he finally gave me the nod and I felt like I had passed some sort of test. We sat around the fire that burned brightly in the darkening light listening to some of the elders tell us stories of their ancestors who believed in some crazy ass shit. Occasionally Bella would whisper the words of a story in my ear, telling me it was one of her favourites.

From time to time one of her friends would sit themselves down beside us and I would listen as they caught up and chattered about people I didn't know. I would stare as the flames of the fire made shapes in the air, the orange and blue disappearing into the sky in a crackle of beauty. I could make Jacob out across the divide, his eyes rarely leaving us and I could feel the hostility rolling off him in waves.

I told Bella I was going for a drink and left her talking to Emily, I was finally remembering some names. Emmett stood over the cooler and jumped a little when I approached, like he was caught in the act.

"Jeebus, I thought you were Rosalie." He chuckled before looking around shiftily.

"Am I going to have to tell on you?" I asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

"Nah, I just promised I wouldn't get wasted tonight and was about to shotgun another can. One more can't hurt, right?" I laughed at his grin and nodded.

"Count me in, I haven't shotgunned in years." Emmett shook two cans and nodded his head towards the side of the house. "So, Jacob?"

"You don't have to worry about him. I warned him."

"Warned him not to do what?"

"He sees Bella and he remembers what he has lost. She's never brought someone home before and he's threatened by you. Plus, she's pregnant so he's acting all protective all of a sudden. So, I warned him that if he caused a scene I'd kick his ass."

"Douche."

"Yep." He handed me a beer and we stabbed the cans, spinning as the bitter liquid rushed into our mouths. "Also, Rosalie told him she'd sneak into his house and chop off his hair if he so much as looked at you wrong."

"Remind me to buy her something pretty." I laughed. The wrong side of Rosalie was somewhere I never wanted to be. I was thankful that she had accepted me so willingly. One foot out of line when it came to Bella, however, and I wouldn't be able to sew myself back together once she was finished with me.

We pulled open another couple of beers and silently watched the party until my phone shattered our peace. I managed to read a text from Alice before it began to ring in my hand. I paused for a second, wondering whether to answer the call from my parents before deciding it was the right thing to do. I nodded at Emmett, drained the rest of my can and walked a polite distance away before finally hitting the button.

"Edward?" My Dad's voice made me wince before I had the chance to say anything.

"Dad."

"Do you want to explain the paper?"

"No." I sighed. There was no lead in with that man. If he was pissed off you knew it straight away. Why bother with bullshit niceties when you have a reputation to protect?

"You will. Who is this girl? Why didn't you warn us about this? Your Mother had to field some intrusive questions."

"I'm sorry Mom was pulled into this."

"Why is the quarterback for the Seahawks involved in this?"

"You know what? This is too much to explain over the phone. Most of that article was bullshit."

"Don't swear at me."

"I didn't swear _at_ you. I swore. There's a difference." My frustration was building and my inner petulant teenage boy was rising to the surface. Alice's text told me to keep calm, but as with any conversation I've had with him in the past fourteen years it was almost impossible.

"Don't get pedantic with me. Most of the article? Tell me the true parts."

"I have a girlfriend, we went on a date…."

"Is she pregnant?" I paused and that's all he needed to realise it was true but he waited for me to confirm it.

"Yes." As soon as the word was out of my mouth the sky exploded in colours. Fireworks deafened me. Bella stood with Rosalie laughing in delight, her mouth making oohs and ahhs as I watched her.

"Where are you?"

"Forks, meeting Bella's family."

"Bella? We expect to see you when you return, Edward, we have things to discuss."

"We have nothing to discuss." He had already hung up the phone before I could explain to him that he would sit and listen and be nothing but polite to the woman I loved when he met her. I let out a roar of frustration, trying to dispel the bad feeling he always left me with. I tossed my phone to the ground in anger and flinched when fingers locked around my wrist.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes and scrubbed my face. Bella ducked under my hunched over body and pushed me upright, brushing back strands of hair from my forehead.

"My father, that's what's wrong." I groaned, shaking my head and biting the inside of my cheek. When I could finally look at her she was watching me warily and I remembered Rosalie telling me earlier about Bella's aversion to male aggression. "Shit. Sorry. I'm fine."

"Yes, you are." She winked and I couldn't help but laugh. "But your phone isn't." She picked up the broken carcass and eyed it sadly with a pout. "Now how can I kick Jasper's ass on Words with Friends on the drive home?"

"Sorry."

"Quit apologising and come back to the party. I miss your face." She reached up on her toes and kissed me tenderly before pulling me back to the crowd. "I love you." She whispered, the words immediately lost to the noises that surrounded us. "I love us."

That's all I needed, I realised. With three words Bella had eradicated all of my frustrations. She believed in us, she believed in me, and that meant everything.

"I love us too." I pulled her back, spinning her under my hand and gripping her waist to stop her when she was facing me. Our lips touched just as another round of fireworks exploded in the sky, we clung to each other under the blues, reds, purples and greens that illuminated the people around us.

"Wow, stars _and_ fireworks? You're on fire tonight." She mumbled against my lips before closing the infinitesimal gap and allowing me to be lost in her again.

It's all I would ever need. Bella and the baby.

Everything else was just the icing on the cake.

X~X~X

Bella was seriously grumpy when we left Forks. The entire drive home was fraught with tension because I didn't know what to say to alleviate her mood and she was heartbroken about leaving Charlie behind again. Instead of trying to force conversation I gave her time to stew, knowing that she would talk to me when she wanted to.

An hour into the journey she prised one of my hands off the steering wheel and placed it on her thigh. I raised my eyebrows but no objections and she caressed the back of my hand with a sigh. Her forehead was pressed against the window and she watched as the green began to turn to grey the closer we got to home.

"I just, I feel like crap whenever I leave him. I feel like _her_." She told me and I knew who she was referring to. "He gives me a hug and acts all brave, like me leaving him doesn't carve a new mark on his heart."

Silence filled the car again because I didn't know what to say to that.

"I look like her, which makes it worse."

"You look like Charlie too." I told her. "I'm thankful that you didn't inherit his moustache." She giggled and slapped my hand.

"Funny. I didn't tell him about the letter." She chewed on the inside of her cheek. "It would have…I don't know how much he knew. Like, if he had known about her being pregnant he would have told me that, right?"

"It would have been the right thing to do, but you were young. How do you think you would have handled that news on top of everything else?"

"It would have made it worse." She replied immediately, obviously having thought it through.

We lapsed back into silence and I spent a good half hour cursing Bella's Mother. The love I already felt for the baby far surpassed any other feeling I've ever encountered. We hadn't even met yet, but I would kill for my child's safety. I couldn't comprehend leaving him behind. To walk out the door and never see him is something I would never consider, no matter what happened between Bella and me.

When I looked at Bella I saw my future, there was nothing else for me. It had hit me out of nowhere but I could do nothing but embrace it. Taking the baby out of the equation I would still have fallen in love with her, of that I had no doubt.

I looked across at her, her forehead was still pressed up against the cool glass of the window and her eyes were shut against the sunlight. She had thrown her hair up into a bun and little wisps had fallen free and framed her face. I wanted to be able to take her pain, set fire to it and dance in the ashes with her in my embrace.

"Keep your eyes on the road and leave me to wallow." She mumbled quickly before sighing.

"It's not my fault you're so easy to look at."

"It'll be your fault if we crashed because you couldn't keep your eyes facing forward." A hint of a smile ghosted across her lips. "You're coming back to mine when we get back to Seattle?"

"I need to go home, to check my mail and messages."

"I want to see your place, can I come?"

"Sure." I shrugged. It never felt strange that I was always at her place. I was so comfortable there that it didn't occur to me that we could be at my apartment. It didn't make sense to me when she loved her house and I did too. My place was cold and impersonal, my personality wasn't anywhere to be found when I walked through the door, compared to walking into Bella's and seeing her stamped all over the house.

X~X~X

I was nervous for some reason, when I unlocked my door and let Bella into my apartment. It was like unveiling the most private part of me. Few people were allowed past my threshold. She skipped in behind me, her mood had improved much to my relief because she was almost back to being the Bella I knew. I could put up with who she sometimes devolved into, but they were mostly held back by the radiance of who she was at her most stripped back.

I led her by the hand through the almost completely empty rooms.

"This is not at all what I expected from you." She told me, peering round the bathroom door.

"What were you expecting?"

"I don't know, not something so…sterile."

"I am a doctor."

"I forget that sometimes, like when you're gagging at me hooking live bait." She smirked and skipped away from me, her arms up defensively.

"We can't all be at one with nature and the circle of life and all that crap." I threw one of the generic throw pillows from my couch at her, missing on purpose.

"You're a shit aim, Cullen." She stuck her tongue out at me and stepped behind the couch, keeping space between us.

"I wasn't trying." I stared at her, dropping my shoulders and stalking her around the room. I launched myself at her across the couch, she squealed and took off into my bedroom, throwing the door shut behind her.

"You're being a bit sexy right now." She called through the door and I laughed.

"Is that right?"

"Yep, and as much as I wouldn't mind hopping on the good foot and doing the bad thing I'm actually starving and you need to feed your child."

"Damn." I dropped my forehead onto the door with a thump. "Fine, what do you want?" The door opened an inch and her face appeared in the space.

"Take-out." She pouted and I shook my head. "Please?" The door opened fully and she tugged on my shirt in supplication.

"I'm not feeding my child crap."

"Honey, I really, really, really want a peshwari nan and some korma sauce to dip it in." She kissed my jaw and my resolve weakened because I'm easily swayed when it comes to Bella using her lips. "Think about it." She lowered her voice seductively. "Taste it on your tongue."

"The only taste that I want on my tongue is yours." I told her, making her eyes widen in surprise.

"Easy there, lover boy. Get me food and then we'll talk about getting you some other things to taste." She winked.

"Fine."

I picked up my mail and checked my messages quickly before grabbing some more clothes to put in my drawer at Bella's. We stopped to get her the food she wanted and she gloated the entire time.

"I can't believe you gave in so easily." I didn't tell her that I would always cave when it came to what she wanted. She could have asked me to find her mouse cheese and I would have trawled the globe for it.

It helped that I was so hungry that my stomach was complaining with gurgles and I was almost in pain from the need to eat.

When I parked outside her house we noticed someone sitting on her doorstep. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Ever since that stupid piece in the paper was printed we had both been pursued by reporters looking to make a story out of nothing.

"Ignore her." I told Bella. We pulled the bags out of the car and marched up to the door, fully intending to ignore the woman on the doorstep but as I walked closer the more familiar she looked to me. I glanced back at Bella to make sure she was ok, she smiled pensively and nodded before passing me her keys.

"Bella Swan?" The woman asked, who in actuality was more of a girl now that I was closer and could see her better. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and impatiently tossed her brown hair away from her face.

"Bella." I stopped, staring at the girl while Bella pressed in close to my side and stopped at the tone of my voice. She looked up at me confused and I nodded back towards the girl.

"Bella? I'm Charlotte." She was waiting for a spark of recognition that her name would never afford her. Bella hadn't made the connection and I wanted to pick her up and run because I knew this going to rip open even more pain that Bella should never have to deal with.

"Look, I'm not giving you an interview or a quote. I'm sick of this and would appreciate being left alone." She told Charlotte confidently. She let me take her hand, my fingers squeezing to get her to look at me.

"Bella, I think you want to talk to her." I murmured.

"Why?" Her forehead crinkled in confusion and she shook her head slightly.

"Sorry, I'm Charlotte Dwyer. I guess you don't really know about me, I mean she told me she told you but I don't know how much she told you, so…." Charlotte rambled and I sighed.

"Bella, Charlotte is your sister."

X~X~X

**Hearty hugs of gratitude to everyone who is reading this, I hope you liked the chapter and if you did why not leave me a review?**

**Ladyeire3 is my pre-reader and she helps me a heap, so big hugs to her too.**

**My Edward has been dubbed Sweetward by Liciapooh25…which I think is awesome.**

**If I get organised I'll post the first couple of paragraphs of the next chapter over at Fictionators Teaser Monday which is…tomorrow!**

**Recommendations are the same as last chapter…I haven't had time to get hooked on anything else lately.**

**Thanks again for the support folks :D xx**


	14. When Bella Met Carlisle

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or anything to do with the Saga…I do own gig tickets for 3 different Kings of Leon shows (I think I'm slightly crazy) and for the first show in Britain by Foo Fighters since 2008!**

_**Previously on We Are Three…**_

_When I parked outside her house we noticed someone sitting on her doorstep. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Ever since that stupid piece in the paper was printed we had both been pursued by reporters looking to make a story out of nothing. _

"_Ignore her." I told Bella. We pulled the bags out of the car and marched up to the door, fully intending to ignore the woman on the doorstep but as I walked closer the more familiar she looked to me. I glanced back at Bella to make sure she was ok, she smiled pensively and nodded before passing me her keys._

"_Bella Swan?" The woman asked, who in actuality was more of a girl now that I was closer and could see her better. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and impatiently tossed her brown hair away from her face._

"_Bella." I stopped, staring at the girl while Bella pressed in close to my side and stopped at the tone of my voice. She looked up at me confused and I nodded back towards the girl._

"_Bella? I'm Charlotte." She was waiting for a spark of recognition that her name would never afford her. Bella hadn't made the connection and I wanted to pick her up and run because I knew this going to rip open even more pain that Bella should never have to deal with. _

"_Look, I'm not giving you an interview or a quote. I'm sick of this and would appreciate being left alone." She told Charlotte confidently. She let me take her hand, my fingers squeezing to get her to look at me._

"_Bella, I think you want to talk to her." I murmured. _

"_Why?" Her forehead crinkled in confusion and she shook her head slightly._

"_Sorry, I'm Charlotte Dwyer. I guess you don't really know about me, I mean she told me she told you but I don't know how much she told you, so…." Charlotte rambled and I sighed._

"_Bella, Charlotte is your sister."_

X~X~X

**Chapter 14 – Bella**

**When Bella Meets Carlisle**

A little piece of me hardened and broke off when Edward uttered those words to me. I did an almost comedic double take to mask the fact that it felt like I had just been punched in the gut. I flinched away from her, stepping behind Edward slightly and grasping his hand so hard I was sure his circulation had been cut off.

While I was fully aware that she wasn't at fault I couldn't help but look at her and think that it was. I blamed her for being conceived and for being the child my Mother had patently loved more.

"She chose you." I accused, appraising Charlotte shrewdly. She had my hair, the same brown given depth by secret colours you could only pick out when your face was nuzzled close to it. Her eyes were lighter, an almost green brown that were gazing at me like I was the second coming of Christ.

I started to chew on my lip but noticed Charlotte chewing on the inside of her cheek so I stopped. For some reason I was breathing heavily, struggling to draw oxygen into my lungs and release it into the ether. It's a good thing Edward was made of stone otherwise I would be on the ground, I was leaning hard into his side and looking everywhere except at my sister.

That's a joke in itself. Sisters grow up together, they bicker, squabble and love without thought. Rosalie was my sister. Alice was edging her way there.

Charlotte was not.

"I'm sorry." She told me and I finally looked at her again. She was around my height, maybe an inch taller. We shared the same body type but she looked a little more athletic than me. She was, essentially, a heightened and prettier version of me.

Looks like she got the good egg.

"You didn't do anything to apologise for." I was surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth. "I don't understand why you are here." Edward cleared his throat beside me to get our attention.

"Perhaps we should take this inside." He nodded at a car with blacked out windows sitting up the street a little. "We don't want this to have an audience."

He unlocked the door and hauled the bags in while Charlotte and I watched each other. Mostly I was watching to make sure she wasn't making eyes at my gorgeous boyfriend. If I had seen a flicker of interest there was no way in hell she was getting past my front door. Once he had everything in the house he returned to me and draped an arm across my shoulder to bring me inside.

"Do you want to come in?" I asked her, mostly out of the politeness that was ingrained in me by Charlie. She nodded and followed us in, closing the door gently behind her and waiting nervously as we stood motionless in the hall.

As much turmoil as I was feeling at least I was in my house, in a place I was comfortable. She was nervous and feeling the exact same things as I was. My heart went out to her.

I hated how I was thinking about her feelings before dealing with my own.

"Drink?" Edward asked, nudging me softly towards the living room and gesturing to Charlotte to follow me before disappearing into the kitchen.

I sank into the couch and curled a cushion into my stomach in a move to protect both me and the baby against whatever was about to happen. I was incandescently angry at the hand life had dealt me but I was intrigued to hear why she thought turning up on my doorstep was an ok thing to do. Everything seemed to be happening all at once.

I fall pregnant, meet the love of my life, get a letter from my abandoning Mother and the sister I never knew about was suddenly throwing herself into my life. It's a good thing I'm made of some pretty stern stuff otherwise I would be a quibbling wreck in a dark room all straight jacketed up against a padded wall.

Charlotte sat in the chair opposite, wrapping her own arms around her stomach in a gesture that mirrored mine.

"So…why are you here?"

"I only just found out about you. When she told me I couldn't help but want to find you…to meet you." She answered.

"I still don't understand why you would just turn up out of nowhere."

"I don't know either." Her eyes brimmed with tears. "Mom never _once_ mentioned she had lived another life before she met Dad. I knew she wrote to you recently, it all came out around then, but after what she did you weren't going to send a reply by return post." She scoffed.

"Charlotte…you know you should have found another way instead of blindsiding me, right?"

"Please, call me Charlie, everyone does."

"I will_ not_ be calling you Charlie." I glared at her. "That's my father's name."

"Sorry." Irritation shot through me at her apology.

"Stop." I held my hand up. "Just stop apologising. It isn't your fault she didn't love me enough to stay, it isn't your fault that you were conceived while she was married to another man, it isn't your fault she didn't stay in touch with me, it isn't your fault that she named you Charlotte and shortened it to the name of my Dad." I ran out of breath and heaved as Edward rushed into the room and curled his body around mine to offer comfort.

I was full on sobbing, the patches I had thrown over the freshly opened hurt dissolving with each tear. Everything hit me, the unadulterated devastation ripped through me and I clung to Edward like he was the only thing keeping me afloat in a sea of betrayal and sneaky fists of upset.

"It would be advisable for you to leave." Edward told Charlotte as he cradled me, his shirt soaked with my tears.

"No." I gasped, shaking my head and pulling myself out of his arms. I took a few deep breaths to compose myself and half sat on Edward's lap. Perhaps I thought that I could use his strength, I could take solace in the fact that someone who had fallen in love with me was on my side. I knew Edward would fight my corner and that helped me to sit that little bit straighter.

Not that I would ever expect Edward to fight Charlotte.

No, I would call Alice for that. She looks like she would fight dirty.

"Where do you live?" The question danced through my head only seconds before it flew out of my mouth. I clicked into investigative mode and had a billion questions for her now that I had managed a cathartic cry against a solid chest.

"Seattle." She told me, somewhat startled by the sudden question. "I go to UDub." I nodded, a little taken aback.

"Does…do you…I mean, is this where you're from?" She shook her head and I appraised her again. Her skin held a golden tone that was almost impossible to achieve in Seattle, even in the height of summer. I was relieved that they weren't from Seattle. It felt like this was _my_ town.

If _she_ had lived in Seattle the entire time and neglected to contact me that sound you would be hearing is the final nail being driven into the coffin. I wasn't open to some sort of movie of the week reconciliation, this week with Charlie had finalised that thought for me. I didn't know if I could allow myself to care because I was forging my own way, having my own family and I wasn't sure there was space for anyone else in it.

"Where are you from?" Edward asked.

"Florida, Jacksonville to be precise. Dad is a baseball player there." That explained her athleticism for me.

"Would I know him?"

"Nah, not major leagues." She shook her head. "He's well past that stage now."

"Why Seattle?" I asked, eager to get back to my own line of questioning.

"I got kind of sick of the sunshine. I'd heard about these things called seasons and wanted to experience them." She joked and I found myself returning her timid smile. "Plus, less chance of hurricanes." She shrugged.

"When did you find out about me?"

"During the summer, Mom sat me down and told me straight. She told me everything. I don't even know why she decided to. I made her tell me your name and I Googled you. I realised that I had seen you before, in the papers with that football player, and I think we were in the same bars some nights because I definitely recognised you."

"That might have been because looking at me is like looking in a mirror seven years from now?" I resorted to sarcasm and she didn't flinch.

"Maybe." She shrugged again and sat forward on the edge of the seat. "Look, I know I should never have turned up here, but I saw you in the papers and it looked like you were crying and it made me need to see you."

"Why?"

"I needed to make sure you were ok." She admitted, her gaze sweeping up at me from the floor and I was surprised by the sincerity I saw there.

"Is there any more of you? Back in Florida?"

"No. Up until July I was an only child." She sighed and I followed suit because what I was about to say could hurt her.

"Charlotte, you still are." I was surprised at the pang of pain that seared my chest when I said the words and her almost stoic flinch made me want to take the harsh words back and replace them with words that explained my thoughts more eloquently.

"I know we didn't grow up together, I know that because we share 50 percent of our DNA it doesn't automatically make us bonded."

There was a knock at the front door that startled us in the silence following her words. The door opened and Jasper walked in nonchalantly. He faked being surprised by someone other than Edward and I being there so badly that I snorted with laughter. He leaned against the doorframe with a whistle, giving Charlotte a nod and me a wink.

Edward kissed me on the temple, mumbling reassurances that he would be back shortly. I watched him walk up to Jasper, punch him solidly on the arm and drag him out of the room. Smiling and rolling my eyes I turned my attention back to Charlotte who was looking pretty confused.

"Edward's brother in law." I explained. "So, you're right, we aren't bonded. You have to realise that as irrational as it is to hold you responsible, and trust me when I say I know that it isn't your actual fault, you still got everything I ever wanted growing up. You got the Mom and the Dad, the solid family. You haven't been left with abandonment issues and a feeling like you aren't good enough."

I rubbed my stomach surreptitiously, a silent reassurance to Simba that he wasn't ever going to grow up feeling like that. Both Edward and I would make sure of that.

"Bella, I want to get to know you. We could have lunch? I'm not going to push it, I'll leave you my number and if you call me then great. If you don't? I'll be disappointed, because from what I've learned you would be a great person to know."

"You don't know anything about me." I shook my head at her but spoke softly.

"I know that you are loved, and people aren't loved like that unless they are worth it. The way he looks at you? It's like nothing else exists, like if he blinks he's scared that when he opens his eyes you'll be gone." She paused and regained her breath while I looked at her stunned that she could have noticed that in the short time we had spent together.

"When I found out about you, Bella, after I got over the shock, I was excited." She admitted.

"When I found out about you it was like someone had punched open the hole she made in me."

We sat in silence and I could hear grunts and thuds coming from the kitchen. I went to the door to see what was causing the noise and saw Edward and Jasper wrestling on the floor. Edward had Jasper in a headlock and they circled on the wood as he tried to get free.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting my own back for the _funny funny prank_." Edward grunted. Rolling my eyes I walked back to Charlotte.

"I'm not promising anything, but leave me your number and display some patience. It has been a long day and I apparently have to break up a fight between two grown men who act like children." I nodded my head towards the kitchen and we heard a chair crash to the floor.

"Well, thanks for at least talking to me. I half expected you to slam the door in my face."

"It was a consideration." I shrugged.

I showed her to the door and let out a deep sigh. Trying to shake off the tension of the last hour I went back to the kitchen and watched my boyfriend being pinned to the ground by his brother in law. I dissolved into giggles and slid down the door frame until I was on the floor and eye level with Edward. He stopped struggling against Jasper when he saw me.

"Are you alright?" Edward asked and Jasper's head turned to me but he didn't move his knee from the centre of Edward's back.

"Yeah." I nodded, enjoying the cool wood against my heated cheek. "I'm actually quite enjoying watching you two wrestle. You're one wrong move away from your own website."

Jasper hopped off Edward and lay down beside me, giving me a full body hug and infusing me with calm.

"I love you, Brown Eyes." He whispered before Edward hauled him off me and punched him in the thigh.

"Get your fucking hands off my girlfriend." Edward growled playfully before scooping me off the floor and into his arms. His hug infused me with calm too, a more content calm full of love and possibility. It's difficult to describe the feeling of being wrapped in his embrace. It was the best place in the world to be.

X~X~X

In return for a handful of days off to come home with me Edward had to work pretty much every hour for the next two weeks. He had called in a whole bunch of favours to accompany me and didn't complain once when he returned to me after a shift so exhausted he could barely crawl up the stairs to bed. The only quality time we had together was the moments before sleep descended. He would tell me about the less gross stuff of his day. The man gagged when I hooked bait to fish with but could be elbow deep in someone's chest cavity without blinking.

He always made time to have a conversation with my belly button too, he would stroke the soft skin on my stomach and tell our cub about the excitement he felt whenever he thought about him. For some reason he was pretty convinced our baby was going to be a Simba, but I secretly thought he was going to be a she.

I spent the week ruminating over Charlotte's visit. I felt bad for her, her excitement was probably short lived once she met me. I had to be a disappointment to her, if only in the way that I had broken down like a weak idiot in front of her. It annoyed me that I even cared about her feelings but I reasoned that I'm not a monster. I'm not the kind of person who sets out to hurt people on purpose or by accident. I didn't revel in the pain of others so obviously I wouldn't be happy she was possibly hurt by her reception.

But honestly, who just turns up on someone's doorstep like that?

Friday morning was the time I picked to inform my work that I was pregnant. Things were going well with the pregnancy. I hadn't succumbed to morning/afternoon/any damn time sickness. Definite fist pump for me on that front. I booked an appointment with Jessica and Angela accompanied me down to her office for moral support. Because, well, Jessica is a bitch and Angela didn't want me to face that alone, even though she wouldn't be in the room with me.

Jessica ushered me into her office and Angela mouthed good luck, as if I were about to be poked with comfy cushions by Monty Python's interpretation of the Spanish Inquisition.

"So, what can I do for you, Isabella?" No matter how many times I tell her that I prefer to be referred to as Bella she blatantly ignored it.

"It was just to tell you that I was pregnant." I got straight to the point and there was an awkward moment where she just gaped at me and I wanted to stick my finger in her open mouth and shout "mouth rape" at her.

"Congratulations?"

"Yes, traditionally that is the correct response." I nodded. She shut her gaping mouth and gave me a mini glare.

"So, no ring, sperm donor?" She glanced at my bare ring finger and smirked.

"No. I'm pretty sure that's the_ inappropriate_ response, Jessica. Should I speak to someone else about this?"

For all that I am a complete and utter dork, at work I am a complete professional. Most of the time. I was taking exception to the tone she was addressing me with and I was probably seconds away from slapping another few IQ points out of her head when my phone buzzed and I took a second to read the message and try to relax a little.

_For the love of God, do not hit the bitch. Show her a picture of Edward instead. It'll hurt her more. A xx_

With a smirk I regained my composure and pulled up the picture I took of Edward as he lay sprawled across my bed in his sexy sexy scrubs just before I peeled them off him last night. He was working his seduction look, even though he was pretty much too tired to talk. His hair was ruffled from my fingers, his lips swollen and wet from my kisses. In short, he looked like a sex god.

"But, seeing as you asked, this is the father of my child." I thrust the phone at her and her mouth gaped again. She looked from me to the picture and back to me again.

"Well." She cleared her throat and looked a mixture of relieved and jealous as she continued. "Sorry, congratulations again, Isabella. I'll have a maternity pack pulled together for you as soon as possible and we'll also have to do a risk assessment for you as well."

Jessica spent the rest of the meeting being a complete professional. I don't know why she couldn't have started it off that way, but sometimes people are odd. I shrugged it off and when we finished I found Angela still waiting for me. We went back to our floor and I went to find my boss to let him know I was pregnant too.

Marcus was far more excited for me than Jessica had been. He called the other partners into his office and they each congratulated me. Aro made a remark about it stalling his plans to offer me partnership and it was my turn to gape because I never once thought I was even being considered. No one in the company had caught any whispers of a new partnership position being thought about.

"It was just a passing thought, Bella. We can discuss it when you return to us after your maternity leave." He told me. "It's best left until then, by the time everything is finalised you'll probably be in labour." He hugged me, after making sure it was alright to do so. He had been careful about that since a temp had accused him of sexual harassment a year prior.

The more I actually told people, the more I liked it. People around the office kept popping their heads in to see if I needed anything and while I didn't particularly love people fawning over me it was a nice change of pace to my working day. Thankfully nobody had crossed that invisible line where they randomly touched my stomach. That was invitation only, thank you very much.

Anyone so much as tries that shit with me and they'll lose their hand.

X~X~X

After a week of not getting to see anyone much because of work and not willing to sacrifice my precious Edward time I found myself missing my girls. We arranged to meet at Alice's boutique on Saturday and I was the first one there. Riley, Alice's completely adorable assistant, had no idea who I was so I browsed the rails of the store while he asked me if I needed any help occasionally. I saw the appeal of shopping, and I knew that beautiful feeling of accomplishment when you walk out of a place with bags upon bags of awesomeness, but the simple fact that it was so time consuming really put me off.

Alice rushed through the door, missing me completely because I was half buried in a rack of dresses at the back of the store. She clicked across the floor and kissed Riley hello on the cheek. His cheeks darkened to a pretty pink colour which she missed because she had disappeared through the back. I giggled at the realisation that he had a crush on Alice and he grinned sheepishly at me when he realised I had noticed.

"Bella?" Alice called from behind a curtain. "I know you're there, I heard you giggle!" She rushed back into the shop and launched herself at me in greeting, almost knocking me into the wall with the impact.

"Ooof. Easy there."

"Sorry, it just seems like forever since I last saw you." She backed up a step and noticed the dress in my hands. "That is beautiful, come through the back and try it on. I just have to do five minutes of paperwork and I'm done, I promise." She pulled me past the counter and we went into her office, Riley giving me a betrayed look as I passed him. I shrugged and mimed locking my mouth and throwing away the key to reassure him I wasn't about to blab his secret.

I stripped down to my underwear and slipped on the black dress I had picked up. Alice fussed around me, pinching in the fabric and letting it drop again.

"You need to take your bra off." Huffing, I did what I was told and tossed it over to my jeans and t-shirt with a flux capacitor on the front. "It's black sequin and paillette embellished tulle." She informed me seriously and I nodded like I understood instead of thinking she just swore at me in French.

"I like how it's swishy." I told her with a straight face and she indulged me like I was a toddler in her Mommy's clothes.

"I can tailor it for you, make it perfect. Or, oh my god how could I have forgotten? I have a Pucci silk dress that would look amazing on you…though you are rocking the Valentino." She nodded. "It's perfect."

"Perfect for what?" I asked while I swished the skirt of the dress around my legs and looked in the mirror.

"Hasn't Edward told you yet?" She spaced out for a second then came back to me. "He was going to tomorrow. Oh well, every year we, as in the Cullens, hold a kind of ball to raise money." She shrugged like it was no big deal and not my idea of hell.

"Oh."

"Yeah, we hate it because we have to act like the perfect family, but it raises money for charities and that's incredibly important so we go along with it."

"Right, charity." I lapsed into silence for a second. "I haven't even met your parent's yet."

"I know, I think Dad has had some kind of stroke because Edward refuses to answer his calls. Don't blame him at all, but…"

"I know." I nodded. The big meeting was going to have to happen and happen soon. I knew they weren't particularly impressed at the way they found out, neither would I be in all honesty. "I'll talk to him about it tonight."

Alice nodded and tilted her head when the bell above the door clanged and we heard someone stride up to the counter. We both smiled when we realised it was Rosalie and we rushed through the curtain to greet her.

"Jesus H Christ. Look at your tits!" She screamed at me, unable to take her eyes away from my chest and encouraging everyone in the store to have a good ogle too. I crossed my arms across them and very pointedly stared everyone down.

"Excuse me?" I laughed, checking them out in a mirror. They didn't look any different to me.

"Just, you know, they look fantastic in that dress." She laughed, completely ignorant to the fact that it was the weirdest hello I had ever heard.

"Bloody hell, Rose, just say hi next time. Ease into the whole "look at your tits" thing." I hugged her tightly.

"Boring." She grinned.

We spent most of the morning in the store, flicking through the gorgeous dresses, skirts and tops that Alice had pulled together. Most of them were from talented new designers, but we would occasion upon some vintage Chanel and new Valentino, like the dress I had talked Alice out of altering for me. The ball was a month away and I didn't know how much of a baby bump I would have by then so it was pointless to nip in the waist of the dress.

Alice had bought up a table that sat eight and invited Rosalie and Emmett. I asked if I could buy the last two seats on the table from her and she readily agreed when I told her it was a gift to Angela and Ben. Angela had been such a great friend that I felt like I owed her a thank you present. And what says thank you more than a two five thousand dollar seats at a high society ball? Not that I would ever tell her the price. That would be between me and Alice.

I talked Rosalie out of buying a Hervé Legér bandage dress for the ball and almost talked myself out of the Valentino. For a ball I always imagined a floor skimming gown, the dress I had picked earlier was a knee skimming and deep cleavage revealing gorgeous dress but not very ball gowny. The unfortunate truth of the matter was, however, that I just didn't have the height to carry off a sweeping floor length gown like Rosalie could.

We finally found a Marchesa dress for Rosalie and my eyes bugged out when Alice showed me a mini dress she was considering. After a couple of hours I couldn't take it anymore and begged the girls to ditch the shopping and let me eat. I pulled the pregnancy card, I had to be careful not to overuse that, and they finally relented. Within thirty minutes we were seated and had ordered in a nearby restaurant.

"Jasper came home covered in bruises last week. It looks like I beat him." Alice told us as she started to eat a burger that was the size of her. Rose snorted, probably at the mental image of little Alice beating big Jasper but she wasn't aware of the freaky strength Alice possessed.

"Edward decided he needed payback for being in the whole Charlie getting his gun joke. To be fair, he didn't_ really_ know about it." I shrugged. "I found them on the kitchen floor. I lost a chair, a fallen soldier." I informed them mournfully.

"How are you doing? About the whole Charlotte thing?" It was the first time Rosalie had broached the subject, knowing me as well as she does meant that she understood that I needed time to retreat into my head this past week.

"I'm still not sure." She threw her arm across my shoulders and squeezed me, her way of telling me she understood. I was so grateful for Rosalie every day of my life, because she knew me in a way that probably nobody else ever would. Emmett knew me from childhood and they both loved me fiercely, but Rose just _got_ me.

While Alice was a new friend she had figured me out quickly, telling me one night that there was aspects of me that were so like Edward that she knew how I would deal with things. To her credit, she was right and she knew exactly what to do in this situation, which was distract me.

Lunch was spent talking about everything except the shit storm Charlotte and my Mother had brought upon me in the last month. I told them about Edward and how surprised I was that I was capable of loving someone so quickly and so completely. His grumpiness when he was tired or hungry, the way he would ball up his dirty socks and throw them into the corners of my bedroom, the way he would sometimes sit with his hands down his pants, his inability to remove the left over cardboard innards of the toilet roll. All of those things and probably a million more little imperfections merely endeared him to me even more. It was a relief to know that someone so perfect wasn't _actually_ perfect.

I told them about my room in Forks and the stars that lit up at night. I explained that Edward wanted that in the baby's room and Alice got excited about decorating the room. That conversation reminded me that we had to start making some plans and sending them over to the carpenter Rosalie and Emmett had hired to make the crib for us.

It also brought up a couple of questions that I hadn't really considered before. When the baby was born it was going to, naturally, change the dynamics between Edward and I. I'm not stupid enough to presume that things would stay the same.

Would Edward have a room for the baby at his place? Would he stop being with me at my house so much? In 6 months would he still even want to be with me?

Alice started to tell us about the latest poem Jasper had found to read to her. He had stumbled upon a new book of French poetry at a market he visited when he was meant to be writing and surprised her with it.

"Well, hot damn, Emmett can barely read English, never mind understand and read aloud some sexy French poetry." Rosalie pouted and I slapped her on the arm in defence of Emmett.

"Hey, you _know_ that Emmett is naturally brilliant at pretty much everything he does. He just doesn't have a head for languages. I think it was all the conjugating of the verbs." I told her hotly and she held her arms up in surrender.

"I know sweets, I was just teasing." She stuck her tongue out at me. "Alice is a lucky lady is all."

"I know, Jasper is amazing." Alice sighed. "It's actually sickening how much I adore him. If I wasn't so sure that the feeling was mutual I'd be pretty jealous about how much he loves you, Bella." She grinned at me and tore off another chunk of burger.

"The feeling is mutual, I'm afraid." I told her sagely. "But, you know, I love you too." I winked.

"Feeling's mutual, girly."

"Alright, Jesus, I love you both too, you both love me. Let's stop this vomit inducing love fest and start talking inches, ladies."

"I'm not going to sit here and listen to Bella talk about my brother's wang." Alice informed us haughtily and we all sniggered a bit too loudly at the use of the word wang.

"Boring." Rosalie stuck her tongue out at Alice and started gesturing sizes with her hands. Her eyes widened with every gesture to go bigger and Alice turned greener and greener. "You've hit the jackpot with that one."

"That I have."

"What about width?"

"Check please!" Yelled Alice.

"Rose." I leaned in close. "The next time you quench your burning thirst with a can of Coke, remember that question and weep with jealousy."

Alice's head thumped down onto the table.

Rose stared at me then at a Coke can that was sitting on a table a few feet away.

"Lucky. Bitch."

X~X~X

Overly optimistic, I think, describes my feelings about what I was seconds away from doing. Edward was sitting next to me in the car as we sat outside his parent's house and he was glaring through the windscreen at the building. Maybe this wasn't a great idea, he was still tired from working straight through the week and had been getting very little sleep. I knew their relationship was contentious in the main and this could be such a disaster that it would be difficult to recover from.

When he crawled into my bed last night, his eyes barely open, and greeted both me and the baby with such contentment I almost didn't mention it. He had instinctively known I had something on my mind, that or Alice had called him to warn him, and he insisted we talk about it. I told him we should see his parents and talk about the baby. Even though they already knew about the relationship and the baby I felt that they deserved a modicum of respect from us.

"This isn't going to be fun." He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and turned his head to look at me. "We could still go for pizza and to see a movie? I'll even buy you cheese puffs?"

"No blackmail, we're adults. A quick in and out and we'll be done." I squeezed his hand and he grinned at me.

"That's what got us into this situation in the first place."

"As far as I remember that wasn't a _quick_ in and out." I leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth.

"We could go home and do a re-enactment?" I rolled my eyes and made to get out of the car because if I didn't we never would.

Edward rushed around to my door and took my hand, scowling at me for not waiting for him to come round and open the door for me. Our fingers locked together and we walked up the path lined with little plants that I could never identify, even under gun point. I've always been kind of useless with plants.

We gave each other reassuring smiles before he opened the front door and we were greeted by his Mom. Edward dropped my hand to hug her, their obvious love for each other eased some of my fears. She rubbed up his arms and took a step back, appraising him in a motherly way and missing nothing.

"You look exhausted." She smiled but didn't pursue it. "Hi, you must be Bella." She turned to me and enveloped me in her arms. I stiffened with shock, this kind of welcome being completely unexpected. She smelled of Chanel and felt soft and motherly. I shivered with memories of my own Mother hugging me, but she never smelled this expensive or felt this warm.

"Hi." I breathed into her shoulder and looked at Edward. He noticed my shining eyes and stroked his fingers across my cheek because he knew why I was fragile in the moment. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs Cullen."

"Call me Esme." She told me, patting my back and stepping away. "Carlisle is in the dining room."

Edward's fingers locked onto mine again and I regained a little composure. I was shocked that a simple hug could shake me so much. Emotions were obviously still very much close to the surface for me. We followed Esme into the dining room and in front of an open fire place with a fire blazing, despite the warmth that hung in the air from the end of summer. He glanced at us perfunctorily when we walked into the room and took his attention back to the book he was reading before closing it on his finger and judging us with more interest.

"Dad." Edward nodded but made no move to go any closer. My gaze had drifted to the table that had been set with sandwiches and cakes. The cucumber sandwiches had seduced me already, I was fantasising about munching a billion of them because I was suddenly ravenous. "This is Bella."

"Hello." Daddy Cullen said with no warmth. His slate grey eyes looked me up and down like I was a cow at the market. He was not endearing himself to me at all. His coldness was stripping away his attractiveness. I switched weight from foot to foot in the silence and I eyed the sandwiches again.

"Shall we sit?" Edward asked, watching me with amusement. Everyone nodded and we sat at the table. I really wished things weren't so strained. Charlie had been a little reticent at first but at least he didn't act like he was a better class than Edward. He had brought me up to look at people as my equals, regardless of their standing. It didn't matter that I had vast personal wealth thanks to my grandparents, if he ever caught me looking at someone like Edward's Dad was looking at me he would have cuffed me across the head and made me endure a lecture about respect.

"I'm sorry you found out about the baby the way you did." Edward started. "We were in Forks visiting Bella's father and had every intention of seeing you when we got back."

"You upset your Mother."

"I can speak for myself." Esme countered. "It wasn't the best way to find out, but it is such happy news." She smiled across the table at me and I wondered how, if he was always this cold, she could stand to live in the same house as him.

"It is, it was a surprise but we are excited." Edward leaned over the table with enthusiasm, grinning at his Mom and it was like his Dad wasn't in the room for a second before he cleared his throat and made a scoffing noise at our happiness.

"I'm disappointed in you, Edward, we taught you to be careful."

"This isn't news to me, Dad. And we were careful."

"Display a little respect." Dr Cullen glared at Edward and I wanted to throw a salad fork across the table to break the oppressive second of silence.

"_He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son_." Edward countered almost immediately and I sat back in awe at his comeback.

"Quoting John Locke will get us nowhere." Esme said with a sigh, looking from her husband to her son with such palpable sadness that I wanted to pick her up and run away with her. I could, because the woman was tiny. I understood now how Alice could be so little compared to Edward's bigness. I stifled back a snigger at the thought of Edward's bigness and eyed the sandwiches again.

"You have a relationship with Emmett McCarty?" Carlisle asked me, having obviously decided that this was no time to consider that it was none of his business.

"He's my best friend. I've known him since I was a kid." I informed them. "His fiancé is also my best friend. I've known her since college. I introduced them."

"So, you are not having an affair with the man then?"

"I wouldn't be your son's girlfriend if I was." I glared at him, digging my nails into Edward's hand to keep him from reacting and to keep me from throwing something.

"Were you aware of our wealth? Is that why you seduced our son and got yourself pregnant?" Edward jerked in his seat and I flinched back like I had been slapped.

"Excuse me?"

"He obviously comes from wealth. We will, of course, insist upon a paternity test." He sniffed.

"No, _we_ will not." Edward roared, standing suddenly and making his chair crash to the ground. He was going to be a serial chair killer soon if he didn't watch out.

"Edward, sit down." I implored, tugging on his hand to sit him down. He glanced at me and frowned before picking up his chair and sitting back down.

"Carlisle…" I began.

"Dr Cullen." He said shortly.

"Carlisle." I said pointedly, making sure he knew that if he wanted respect from me he had to earn it. "I want to make one thing _very_ clear. I don't want Edward's money, I have my own. I didn't _plan_ to get pregnant. I want you to be part of our child's life, but if you insist on treating both of us like something you just scraped off your shoe then you will not be welcome."

We sat in more silence, Edward's leg bounced against mine and Esme looked at me like I had just delivered a moving speech to the nation instead of telling a man how things stood. I nodded at Edward when he raised his eyebrows in a question of whether we should go or not.

I still hadn't been able to have one of those amazing looking sandwiches.

We stood to leave but I approached Carlisle before leaving the room.

"It was interesting meeting you." I told him honestly, because it was. It was interesting trying to figure out how Edward and Alice had managed to grow up to become the people they were. Then I remembered that they grew up with an entirely different man, not this one who sat before us all bitter and joyless.

"_There are Fathers who do not love their children; there is no Grandfather who does not adore his Grandchild_." I told him, bastardising a Victor Hugo quote that I had never been forgotten.

We locked eyes and something glimmered behind the façade. I nodded to him and allowed Esme to wrap me into a hug again.

"Thanks for having me."

"You are welcome anytime, Bella. It was lovely to meet you. Look after him for me."

"Don't you worry about our boy." She tightened her grip before letting me go.

Edward and I practically ran to his car, eager to leave the evil property of doom. Edward and Alice had told me about their father, as had Jasper, but until I experienced it I never truly believed the coldness. A full body shiver ran through me and I flinched in my seat at the force of it.

Edward slammed the steering wheel in anger a couple of times and I winced into the car door. For some reason male aggression really freaked me out, I didn't know the root of it but couldn't help the thrill of fear that I experienced whenever I was around it. He caught himself and stopped what he was doing and seconds later we were tearing through the streets and I started giggling.

"What are you laughing at?" Edward asked me, amused.

"I think I'm just pleased we got out of there alive." I giggled. "Oh god, your poor mother." I stopped laughing.

"Yeah, Alice and I have begged her to leave him but she refuses."

"She loves him. It's really quite simple but horrendously complicated."

"I'm really sorry about what he said, I would never ask for a paternity test." I cupped the back of his neck in my hand and played with the hair that lived there.

"I know that. Take me home Edward, I think I need a shower to wash the evil off."

"Your wish is my command. I feel like watching you wash the evil off." He waggled his eyebrows at me in a manner I'm sure he thought was seductive but came across as sex pest.

"Get a move on." I smirked.

Looking like a sex pest or not it was still a thing of beauty when he got that look in his eye.

X~X~X

When we got home I banished Edward to bed. Esme was right, he did look exhausted and the tension of the early afternoon was bound to add to that. Besides, I needed him out of the way so that I could arrange our date. He pouted at me at first because I tried to send him back to his own apartment but how can I say no to a pouty Edward?

I lay with him for a while, his body wrapped around mine, my hands scrunching through his hair as his breathing evened out and he started making the sporadic snuffling noises that were part of his repertoire of sleep noises. I remained awake, watching him sleep like a stalker. Occasionally I would dip my head into his neck and inhale deeply, breathing in his unique smell and committing it further to memory.

I enjoyed the feeling of contentment that I was finally becoming used to. I had to remember to thank him for that. He was the cause, our little cub and him. Sighing happily I snuggled further into his body. It was amazing how I could forget anything else existed when he was in the room.

Charlotte's visit niggled at me, however. I could definitely have been nicer to her. After thinking it through I decided that I could at least meet the girl for coffee and learn some things about her.

I was building myself a family, I had people I trusted with my life around me, why couldn't she fit into that? If things don't work out then I can at least hold my head up and say I tried.

I resolved to call her and invite her to meet me and wrapped my legs around Edward. I couldn't be close enough to him. If it wasn't entirely disgusting and impossible I would probably be happy to burrow into him and live in his skin, to let his body nourish and warm me.

Yeah, that's definitely disgusting and something I should never say to him.

X~X~X

Jasper arrived not long after Edward fell into his deep sleep. I had roped him into helping me set up for the date that evening. Emmett arrived not long after that, bitching about the fact that I had requested Jasper's help and not his. It didn't matter that I told him I thought he was busy with training and the team and didn't want to disturb him.

"Doesn't matter how busy I am with other things, Bells, you'll always take priority." He told me seriously and I had to hug him because he was just too sweet. I really didn't deserve friends like this. They were all individually awesome, but as a unit they were a force to be reckoned with.

I was a super lucky bitch.

I set them to work, handing them the plan I had doodled. It was as far from a coherent plan of action as it was possible to be but they put their heads together and tried to work it out. I had the mesh and string upon string of lights ready but no idea as to how I was actually going to make it happen.

"How the hell are we going to do that?" Emmett questioned me. "It's a sweet idea but I don't know how you expect us to do it without attaching that stuff to the walls of the house."

"There is no way in hell I'm risking any of the stonework."

"Don't worry, we'll work it out." Jasper reassured me and pulled Emmett back into the garden as I received a text from Alice.

_Don't let Jas' climb anything today, but if he does make sure you see it x_

I like it when Alice sends me oblique texts. I resolved to probably say something to Jasper but grabbed a bag of chips and a drink before setting up camp at my table in the garden. I didn't want to miss a thing.

After a good amount of back and forth bickering between Emmett and Jasper, with the occasional interjection from me, it was finally decided to use the trees that were dotted around the garden instead of using my walls.

"I think Emmett should do the climbing." I shouted over to them as they walked down the garden to one of the trees. Jasper turned to look at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion but he shook it off before turning back to the tree.

My words didn't have the effect I desired, instead of allowing Emmett to climb one of the old and gnarled trees that made up my garden Jasper insisted that he do it. He crouched and leapt up, grabbing onto the lowest branch and swinging himself up to sit in it. I watched, completely impressed with his spryness and almost missed the first indication that this wasn't going to go as smoothly as he thought. When he stood his foot slipped off the branch, he only just caught himself and regained his balance.

"You alright there?" Emmett called up.

"Yeah, just throw up the corner."

I sat forward, resting my elbows on my knees and covered my face with my hands, peeking through my fingers at them because I was suddenly thinking this wasn't going to go well.

"I've changed my mind." I called over to them. "Just leave it, I'll think of something else. Please come down Jasper."

"It's all good, darlin'."

Famous last words.

Jasper's foot slipped again, but because I had distracted him he couldn't react as quickly. His ass smacked down onto the branch, his shout of pain echoed around the garden. He flipped almost completely around the branch before gravity grabbed him and yanked him down to the ground.

Only, instead of hitting the ground he rebounded off my trampoline.

His limbs flailed and he flew the air without the greatest of ease, his body twisting and hands grabbing at thin air trying to gain purchase on something. It felt like it happened in slow motion, but in seconds he was crumpled on the grass and groaning.

I snorted with laughter before I could ask him if he was alright. Emmett was curled on the ground beside Jasper, drowning out his moans of pain with his booms of laughter. I tried to make it over to him but my knees weakened with each bubble of laughter I struggled to contain and I ended up half crawling over to make sure he was ok.

"Don't you fuckers hurt yourselves making sure I'm alive." Jasper complained when I finally made it over to him.

"Aw, Jas', I tried to warn you."

"I don't know why my own fucking wife couldn't have warned _me_ instead of _you_."

"Because she knew how damn funny it would be?" Emmett guffawed.

"What kind of self-respecting adult owns a goddamn trampoline anyway?" He huffed, hauling his body off the ground and limping over to the aforementioned item.

"Hey, don't you go disrespecting the tramampoline!" Emmett muttered, giving it a stroke. He loved it more than I did. And I loved it more than an adult should admit to.

"It's good exercise." I pouted, ruffling Jasper's already askew hair. "You guys don't have to put that stuff up, it's obviously dangerous." I conceded, already trying to think of another idea to execute in a couple of hours.

"One little fall isn't going to make us stop, is it Jasper?" Emmett asked, effectively throwing down the gauntlet and leaving Jasper with little choice other than to finish the job.

"I'll just make Alice massage me all better later." He winked at me and they set back to work, this time with Emmett doing the climbing.

I swear Emmett is half monkey. When we were kids we were always climbing trees. Considering that Forks is fundamentally a forest with occasional houses we had almost nothing else to do until we discovered the joys of underage drinking and French kissing.

Half an hour later and everything was in place, Emmett was health and safetying the garden and making sure there was no possible way for me to electrocute myself with all the lights. Once he was completely satisfied that I wasn't going to accidently fry myself he grabbed Jasper and they hightailed it out of the house.

It was time to wake Edward and I could only hope that he was going to like my dumbass idea for a sweet date.

X~X~X

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	15. When Edward Loses

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. I do own these words, however. **

**Chapter 15 – Edward **

**When Edward Loses**

Bella woke me with whispers and kisses peppered across my cheek. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into the bed and nuzzling my face into her neck. I knew that she had worked hard while I was asleep to organise our date but I would be content to just stay in bed until I had to go to work again. I grumbled against her skin, puffing little breaths of air out between the kisses I showered her neck with.

"Want to stay here…don't make me get up…you're so warm…god, I love you."

Her giggles filled the room at my protests and I growled when she ran her nails across my bare back.

"You need to eat." She smiled and I opened my mouth to protest but my stomach howled loudly, making Bella smirk and quirk an eyebrow at me smugly. I tugged her back down to the bed, lifted her shirt and scrubbed my scruffy chin across her belly.

"Mommy's evil, Sim'." I told our baby through her belly button and flinched out of the way of Bella's feeble attempt at retribution in the form of a weak punch.

"Hey, no introducing bias so young. Cub's already going to adore you, I'm going to have to work at it."

"Are you kidding?" I loomed over her, cupping her face in my hands. "Our kid is going to worship the ground that you walk on, just like his Daddy." I dipped my head and kissed her. She arched her body into mine and hummed against my lips.

"You're just too smooth." She murmured. She kissed the corner of my mouth and shifted under me so that I was nestled between her legs. "You've won me over, we'll just stay here all night."

"No deal. If I need to eat then so do you and Sim', come along." I leapt up and grabbed her hands in mine to pull her to her feet.

Bella pouted and relaxed all of her muscles so that if I did pull her up she would fall to the ground. Cocking my head in exasperation I moved my body into hers and threw her arms around my neck. She squealed when I scooped her up, my hands settling on her ass and I smirked when her legs automatically circled my waist.

"Cheat." She kissed my cheek.

"You're just easy."

"Well, we knew that already." She laughed in my ear.

I carried her down the stairs and followed her directions to go into the garden. In the time that I've spent in Bella's house I had rarely seen the garden. It was either too late or too early to truly appreciate the fact that she had an outdoor space that rivalled my apartment for square footage. I set Bella on her feet when I stepped into the garden.

"I made us dinner." She told me proudly and gestured to the table already set with cutlery, glasses and mats. "Take a seat and I'll go get it." She skipped back into the house and I sat down, letting my gaze drift across the garden and take in what she had set up. I didn't quite understand what I was seeing but I knew that she would explain it to me.

Bella returned with warmed pasta bowls and disappeared again before placing a pot of some sort of pasta and a tray of bread. The weather was on our side and she was taking advantage of what would probably be one of the last warm evenings we would have before next year.

Next year we would be sitting out here with a baby monitor and listening to our child's even breathing.

I couldn't wait.

"So, you want to maybe explain what that's all about?" I asked Bella, gesturing to the lights strung across the garden that looked like they were suspended mid-air.

"It's really lame." She shrugged and blushed a little before staring down at her empty plate.

"I doubt that." I smiled encouragingly when she finally looked at me.

"Well, we can't see the stars properly because of light pollution and stuff so I thought I would recreate them." I looked back at the lights and the shapes almost clicked into place, but I wasn't the kid who would stare at the stars and learn all about them so I didn't make sense of them all.

"That's cool." I said, because it honestly was. She was kick ass for doing that.

"I remembered that you wanted to paint the ceiling of the nursery with the stars and I thought I could talk you through them and we could pick out some to make a little brighter than the others. I got an air mattress and some blankets for if it gets cool when it's dark."

Without another word I left my seat and crouched beside hers, kissing her until her eyes fluttered at me in a sign that she needed to catch her breath. I don't know if she even knew she did that, but I knew that if I didn't back off slightly she would kiss me until she passed out.

"You're going to have to explain what I'm seeing."

"No problem, I could probably trace the shapes in the sky without seeing them through the clouds I know them so well." She gave me a sad little smile before it grew into a genuine grin. Sometimes my heart ached for her, for her loneliness at night. I pictured her staring silently at her ceiling and wondering what she had done that meant that she didn't deserve her mother's love.

Jasper would kick my ass if he knew I had even thought the phrase "heart ached", but if he knew that about Bella his would too. His easy acceptance of Bella and his obvious protectiveness and love of her was something I would forever be grateful for.

While the sky grew dark we talked easily about trivial things, our comfortable conversation flowed like the wine she was missing so much. I almost fell off my chair when she told me that Jasper had fallen out of one of the trees and I couldn't stop laughing at her description of it.

I really would have paid to see that.

We lay on the air mattress in the middle of the grass, our bodies smooshed tightly together for warmth, but mainly because I just loved touching her. The way her chest rose and fell against mine? Yeah, I really did love that. I gazed at the shapes, rapt with attention, and let Bella mutter the meanings to me. She would trace the shape out with her finger for me, making me understand what I was seeing, before telling me the name and the myth.

When she had covered them all and we had picked out our favourites we turned out the lights and tried to make out the constellations in the actual sky. I was atrocious, despite what I had learned, but Bella awarded me a kiss whenever I was even halfway close. So I started to make stuff up and she indulged me as I talked nonsense, kissing me whenever she deemed my ramblings either funny or factual. Sometimes I didn't know why I was being rewarded but I liked it anyway.

All too soon her kisses were being returned and with whispers and giggles I made for a homerun on an air mattress in the garden of the woman I loved.

Outdoor sex is fucking awesome.

Particularly when Bella tries to be quiet so as to not disturb any neighbours and lets out bursts of groans and moans before clamping her teeth into a spot on my shoulder when I make her come.

She fell asleep in my arms and I carried her upstairs to bed. Brushing the hair out of her face I sat for a while and watched her sleep, her nose twitched like she was casting a spell and I grinned because I adored her.

I loved her and she loved me back.

I crawled into bed behind her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her back to nestle on my chest. I kissed the back of her neck and her arm moved up and into my hair.

"Mmmm…love…you." Bella sighed, barely conscious.

"I fucking love you too."

Sometimes, when I love you seems too safe, the liberal application of fucking makes all the difference.

_That's what she said._

My last thought that night was that I was turning into Emmett.

X~X~X

"Dr Cullen."

"Dr Cullen!"

"Dr Cullen, we need you over here!"

I was being torn in forty different directions, multiple people calling my name like hooks catching into my skin and pulling me towards them and away from each other.

Three doctors were out sick and I was running between the ER, Intensive Care and surgery trying to help out in any way I could but in reality I was spreading myself too thin and I was exhausted already. I still had nine hours to go. Nine hours until I could close my eyes and let darkness wash over me.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, running through my options in a second before opening them again and barking out orders and running beside a nurse to intensive care where a patient had coded.

It took me forty minutes to get him stable again. His family stood and watched me work through the glass in the door. Tears washed their faces free of pretence, leaving only the raw grief that I couldn't understand because nothing like this had happened to me before. I had never had to watch someone I loved die in front of me. I worked until my back ached and neck was almost locked into place, determined that this guy's family was going to have more time, even if it was just one more hour.

I left him in the care of the nurses, confident in their abilities, grabbed a change of scrubs and walked back down to the ER where I saw my Mom and Alice waiting for me patiently in the waiting area. Alice sprang up and hugged me briefly before letting Mom hug me too. I hadn't seen her since the disastrous Sunday when I introduced them to Bella.

"Once again, you look exhausted."

"I am." I let myself fall into her hug briefly before pulling back. "I don't have time for a proper lunch break." I informed them.

"That's ok, we can go to the cafeteria and grab a sandwich and a coffee." Mom compromised and I smiled, thankful that she was such easy company. Some of the sadness had gone lately, replaced by a spark of mischief and happiness that seemed to grow each time I saw her. Something had shifted in the dynamic between her and Dad.

We grabbed a tray of food and I ignored the stare Nurse Mallory was sending our way. Alice rolled her eyes when she noticed and gave her a sarcastic wave, shaking her head.

"That woman is skankilicious." Alice whispered, dodging out of the way of Mom's quick hand.

"Don't be like that, Alice." Mom admonished and I snickered. "How is Bella?"

"She is great." I grinned through a mouthful of sandwich, making her grimace a little. "Everything with the baby is good."

"Will you be finding out the sex?"

"No, we're going for a surprise." Alice rolled her eyes.

"I tried to explain just how difficult that makes buying anything and decorating the nursery, but they don't care, they just live in their little loved up bubble ignoring the rest of us." She stuck out her tongue behind Mom's head.

"It's their choice." Mom caught the back of Alice's head and I grinned.

We chatted about the baby, and Mom asked me about where we were all going to live. I hadn't thought about it. I assumed that the baby would stay in Bella's house and I would continue my current mission of moving myself in one piece of clothing at a time. I wouldn't have any compunction in getting rid of my apartment and I felt so at home at Bella's already. But we were still technically in the honeymoon period and we hadn't had any rows. I wasn't naïve enough to think that this would last.

I was, however, confident that we would get through anything because there was no doubt in my mind that I could never love someone like this except her.

"Should I be buying a hat? Looking out some old family jewellery that Bella can wear on her left hand?" Mom quirked an eyebrow at me and gave me her approval of Bella in a simple sentence. Irina never had the chance at a family ring.

"Slow down, we are only four months in. Maybe start looking for it in a year or so." I smiled.

Alice opened her mouth to squeal at me for even thinking about marriage to someone she loved as much as I did, only not in the same way I hope, but I was saved by my name being shouted over the speakers hanging suspended in the room.

"I'm sorry, I have to go." I threw the last of my sandwich in my mouth, followed it with the last of my coffee and ran back to the ER, not expecting the chaos that met me.

X~X~X

A bus had crashed into a Starbucks.

Twelve people were on the bus, thirty in Starbucks.

We were the closest hospital to the accident sight, the most critical were sent to us along with a number of the minor injuries.

I felt like Zack Braff in The Garden State, the bit where he's on the plane and everything around him is slow motion chaos and he is in the eye of the storm, calmness personified.

These were the moments ER doctors excelled in. They knew what to do, they knew who to send where and they knew that this was their calling in life. In the moment I knew it wasn't where I wanted to be. For all that I fought against my Father I think that there was a possibility that I could be an excellent surgeon and it was never too late for me to pursue that.

I thought about the time involved in it and considered the distance it would put between Bella, the baby and I. I shook the thoughts away and called out orders. The last patient through the door was a pregnant blonde woman, her husband nervously holding her hand and pleading with me in silence to make sure that she was going to be ok.

There was a smear of blood across her face, gauze pressed tightly against her scalp and worry written all over her face as she cradled her belly with one arm.

I directed everyone to where they needed to be and took over with the pregnant woman. I checked her vitals and asked about the accident.

"We were pretty far back." Her husband told me. "We were knocked to the ground and there was glass everywhere." I nodded, looking at the gash on her forehead and eyeing the glass that was deeply embedded in her scalp.

"How did you land? On your front, side or back?"

"Side."

"Did you hit your head?" She shook it. "I'm going to get a scan, just to make sure everyone's alright." I smiled and tried to be reassuring. "How many months are you?"

"Seven." They both grinned at me, elated at being on the cusp of parenthood and I returned the smile because I was in the same position.

"Nobody here knows yet, but I'm going to be a Dad." I admitted. It felt good to say it out loud to strangers. I nodded to them and left the room to call up to maternity for what I needed.

X~X~X

Three hours later and everything seemed calmed. We had dealt with all the critical patients and I had escaped to the suture room to help clear the long line of people with minor injuries that needed patched up. Sutures are something I can do with my eyes shut. I love the repetitive and monotonous actions that it involved. It allowed my mind to wander and calm down from the frenzy of the past few hours.

The woman I was stitching up kept fluttering her eyelashes at me and I wanted to tell her she was wasting her time. This ship had sailed, lost to others under the watchful eye of one Isabella Swan. It would be easier, and more subtle, to do if I had a ring on my finger but Bella had yet to make an honest man of me.

What? I'm progressive.

Plus, too soon. I didn't even know her feelings about marriage. Her Mom could have royally fucked up her opinion of it for all I knew. There was still so much to learn and I was looking forward to being studious in my attentions.

I sent the eye fluttering woman on her way and took a quick break. Slipping out to the street to inhale the fresh oxygen tainted by exhaust fumes and the smells of the working world. Another doctor was standing next to the door, sucking on the filter of a cigarette like his life depended on it.

Like he didn't know exactly what that shit did to your body.

I wondered if he had one to spare.

Shaking the latent nicotine need away I greeted Brady with a nod.

"Hey."

"Crazy in there, right? I quit smoking." He shook his half smoked cigarette at me and grimaced. "It just takes a second for everything to be broken."

I nodded because I understood. In a second everything can be turned inside out. A resolve to quit an unhealthy habit, a bone, a life, a family, a future and hope can all be broken in a simple second. I leaned back against the scratchy brick wall, trying to absorb some of the fading sun. I sent Bella a quick text, checking in and making sure everything was good in her world. I inhaled deeply, taking in some second hand smoke and feeling almost thankful for it.

I tried to think of something reassuring to say to Brady but my pager started screaming at me so I shot him a smile and disappeared back inside.

I've never been able to see the future like Alice, or feel the emotions of others like Jasper for that matter, but I stepped back into the building and my stomach dropped. Bile rose in my throat and I instinctively knew where I was needed. I ran flat out to get to the room and my instinct was right, making me even sicker.

"Help her." He screamed at me, her blonde hair spread across the pillows, her eyes rolled back into her head and nurses fighting to rectify the situation. I barked out orders, administering the drugs and fighting to conquer that prick known as Death.

"She was fine…one second she was fine…then she wasn't." Her husband stuttered behind us, watching as we disregarded careful and gentle in the rush to get his wife out of her seizure and back into lucidity.

Her husband hugged me when we stabilised her. He pulled me out into the hallway and closed the door, watching his wife through the window in the door. He swallowed loudly and deliberately before catching my eyes for a second and looking away.

"If it comes down to it, it's her, save her. We can make another baby. I can't make another her, you understand?"

I nodded and he went back into the room. A nurse handed me the woman's chart and I noticed the lab results had been added. My stomach tried to kamikaze out of my body for the second time that day.

"We have to send your wife for a CAT scan."

X~X~X

Death kicked my ass.

I put up a vicious fight. We ran her into surgery as soon as it was confirmed that she had a brain tumour that no one knew about until that bus crashed into the Starbucks. We thought that maybe it was one of those things that happens for a reason, that there would be some good to come out of a bad situation.

We were all wrong. She coded on the table. I watched from behind the surgeon, my fingers itching to cut and delve and cure and save a family from being ripped down the middle. Her husband's words were haunting me. He couldn't make another her.

She was the only one.

He lost her.

I failed him.

I took him to the maternity unit. He looked down at his son, a little almost completely naked bundle with drips and tubes covering his body in the incubator. I held that man in my arms as he broke down and sobbed over the loss of his wife. He hiccupped a laugh when he looked at his son a second time and I told him over and over again how sorry I really was.

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Edward." He chuckled a little.

"Yeah, I was going to name him after you…but…"

"Yeah." I chuckled mirthlessly along with him. "Maybe a middle name?"

"Maybe." He swallowed and tried to hold it together.

"Is there anyone I can call for you? Anything I can do?"

"You've done enough." I winced at the words, even though he meant them in the opposite way to how I heard them in my head. "Thank you."

We looked at his son again. In five months one of these little humans would be mine. Bella and I would be elated and glowing, holding him in our arms and unable to stop the beaming smiles on our faces. To have a moment like this, where your soul would split in two, one part joyful and the other part grieving, would kill me. I wouldn't be strong enough to cope. I could only hope this guy would be.

"Dr Denali will be your son's doctor. She's the best." I informed him. I felt like I was palming his case off to someone else, but Tanya was the best person in the world to look after this little guy.

"Thanks. Oh, good luck with your baby."

"Good luck with _yours_."

We shook hands and I left, unable to stand beside him any longer knowing that I couldn't help. I had twenty minutes left on my shift. I spent five of them having a quick shower, another five getting dressed and grabbing my things. The last ten could go to hell.

"I'm out." I called out to the nurses on my way past and I slammed through the doors to get to my car.

X~X~X

Bella's house was blanketed in darkness by the time I got there. I had driven aimlessly for half an hour. I had punched the shit out of my steering wheel and managed to dent it only slightly. My frustrations had finally given way to tears at some point.

I let myself into the house and reset the alarm, stopping on my way to the bedroom to scrub my face clear of the salty residue of my mini mental breakdown. I peeled off my scrubs and quietly let myself into Bella's bedroom.

She was asleep on her side, her body curled in on itself in the same position our baby would be in, her arms were crossed across her body as if protecting her from some unseen night threat. Her breathing was the only sound I could hear. Her lungs filling with air and pushing her back against the covers before releasing it and lowering back down. Her mouth was open slightly and her hair looked like it had been backcombed by Stevie Knicks.

"Bella?" I whispered, crawling into bed behind her. My cold hands on her warm skin caused her to gasp and turn into my touch. As if she knew, even in her sleep, that it was me. I moved her hair away from her neck and kissed the sensitive skin, hoping that she would open her eyes and realise that I needed to feel her. I needed to be anchored to her and know that, for tonight at least, everything was going to be alright.

The little hairs along her arms stood on end at my touch. I ran my fingers along her collar bone and she sighed. I could see her eyes fight to open, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks.

"Bella?" I asked against her skin. Trying to wake her up was selfish of me, but I needed her. When she needed me I was there without question and I knew if she was awake she would understand.

"Edward?" Her voice was cracked with sleep. I kissed her cheek as she yawned, her body turning around until she was on her back. My hands ghosted across her breasts and she arched her back. Finally Bella was awake enough to know what I needed and she peeled off her vest, throwing it across the room when she untangled her hair from it.

My lips descended onto her skin again, I trailed kisses between her breasts, across her nipples and stopped at her stomach. I couldn't stop stroking her skin, revelling in the smoothness under my fingertips. I continued to kiss her stomach and pressed my ear to her belly at the spot where I noticed the tiniest change to the flatness.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to hear Simba's heartbeat through the fluids, flesh and skin cocooning him until he was ready to meet us but I tried. I frowned in concentration and prayed to anyone who was listening to let me hear him. I kissed Bella's belly again and her hands scrunched in my hair.

The bridge of my nose started to tingle as I whispered pleas against her skin. I closed my eyes against the prickling of tears but they escaped against my will.

"Edward?" Bella tugged me up her body, latching her hands onto my elbows and pulling my face level with her own. "What's wrong?" Her hands smoothed against my cheeks, pushing my hair away from my forehead and drying my face with her fingers. I could feel, rather than see, her eyes on my face.

I shook my head and nuzzled my face into her neck, allowing her to comfort me with the full body hug that I usually gave her. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her legs locked around my waist. After a minute I kissed the pulsating vein in her neck and pulled back a little, finally moulding my lips around hers and conveying my need in a deep kiss. My tongue slid against hers, the taste of her citrus and mint toothpaste still lingering in her mouth.

Bella removed her underwear and slid mine down my legs without another word. She returned my kisses, continued to wipe the traitor tears from my eyes and allowed me to anchor myself in her. I was selfish in my need for her, resolving to make it up to her in the morning. I paused when we joined, resting my forehead against hers.

"Thank you." I mouthed, because I wasn't sure exactly what I was thanking her for, there was too much and I couldn't pin point the exact one in the moment. She clasped my ass in her hands and encouraged me to push deeper, her fingers moving to my hips to guide me with the lightest of touches before leaving my skin and delving into her own.

I came hard, emptying inside her and collapsing half on top of her.

"I lost today." I admitted, trying to ignore my guilt as Bella smoothed my hair and kissed my eyelids, her lips curving into a slight smile.

"You'll win tomorrow."

X~X~X

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	16. When Bella Shows Edward Her Secret Place

**Disclaimer: I don't own and part of Twilight. I own these late ass words though. **

**Chapter 16 – Bella **

**When Bella shows Edward her Secret Place**

I had to leave Edward sleeping in my bed the morning after he came home torn apart. I wrote a note for him and stuck it to his head before I left for work. He didn't even move when I thwacked the post-it onto his forehead. He really was dead to the world when he slept. Sometimes I wake up and he is in this weird position with his arms up around his head completely splayed out across the bed. Somehow, on those nights, I manage to mould myself around his body in the limited space he leaves me. I basically have to mount him in my sleep to ensure that I don't fall off the bed.

Night time mounting and no happy ending. Seems unfair to me.

I kissed his face more gently than I had pressed the note to his head and his lips twitched into a little satisfied grin. I could cry with happiness when I look at him sometimes. I still can't believe that he is mine. My work is lucky I love that damn job so much otherwise my notice would be in and I'd brick up the front door so neither of us could leave.

I am so happy Edward can't read my mind. He would back away slowly and run for his life if he knew what went through my head at times.

In fact, if there wasn't a new guy starting today I would call in sick and burrow back under the covers and smooth his upsets away. I wasn't used to men showing such blatant emotion around me. Sure, Emmett and I had been through all sorts of trials and tribulations so I had seen him at his most vulnerable but he was practically my brother so it didn't count.

I had seen Charlie cry once. That night he burned his letter as we watched was the only time. We weren't much for being overtly emotional. For Edward to let me see him like that, it was almost like another part of me fell in love with him. I'm going to award teary Edward the love of my oftentimes stoic spleen.

Yes, definitely very lucky he can't read my mind.

X~X~X

"Bella!" Marcus smiled excitedly at me when I walked through the office to get to my own. He was standing with a tall, dark haired man who seemed overly pleased with himself. I felt my skin begin to crawl but I shook it off with a small frown. I don't think I've ever reacted to someone on such a visceral level before.

"Good morning Marcus." I returned his smile and threw my bag into my office as I passed it.

"This is Bella Swan, she'll be the best person to contact with any questions you may have about burgeoning projects and the like." Marcus gestured to me and I did a little internal happy dance at being so well thought of by him.

"Hello." I took in the new guy's appearance and noticed his hair was slicked back with too much product and he kept sniffing his nose like he was a coke fiend. I offered my hand and he grasped it too firmly, as if trying to prove something to me. My grip matched his until he introduced himself.

"I'm Royce King." He bared his teeth at me in a smile that was shark like. I wrenched my hand back as subtly as possible and considered soaking it in a bucket of bleach overnight. He wasn't going to touch me again.

"Nice to meet you." I lied and backed up. "If you'll excuse me I have to get started."

Holy motherfudger sugar.

I had decided a few days ago to limit my internal swearing because I was scared that Cub could hear me like he was some sort of telepath.

My thoughts really are irrational at times.

I cradled the phone between my shoulder and face while I punched in Rosalie's number. She was going to sugar a gosh darned brick when I tell her that the new guy I'm going to have to help get settled was the very same man who had, over a course of years, broken her jaw and dislocated her shoulder amongst the other unsavoury acts.

"Hello?"

"Rose, you are not going to fudging believe this."

"If you are going to talk to me you have to use grown up words Bella, the baby cannot hear you and you sound like you're deficient when you say fudge instead of fuck." I sighed loudly.

"Fine, you won't fucking believe this. Royce King is the new hire in my company."

Silence.

"Rose?"

"Are you alright?" She asked quietly.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"He's a misogynist, Bella, and you're pretty high on the totem pole at work."

"Can I kill him? Can I throw him "accidently" down some stairs?"

"You'd need to make sure there was no evidence or witnesses. It would be hard."

"Damn. I can't work with him, I need to set fire to my hand to cleanse it after he shook it."

"Even that wouldn't work, trust me." She managed a shaky laugh. "He'll self-destruct, he does it at every work place."

"How do you know that?" Angela popped her head round my door and I gestured at her to come in. She sat silently, listening to my end of the conversation as her eyes grew bigger and bigger.

"I've kept track of him, I can't believe I didn't know he was going to work at your place. Everybody is too scared to piss off the Kings so no one will give him a bad reference, but there are some pretty bad rumours floating about."

"We just have to wait him out then?"

"Yeah, he'll be asked to move on if you give him enough time. I think it would be a great idea to never be alone with him though. Ok?"

"Ok. I'll make sure I'm never alone with him. I've got to go."

"Take care, sweets. Speak to you later."

I hung up the phone and filled Angela in on the gossip. I needed someone to know and she understood completely. She also knew about Rosalie's abusive ex thanks to a girl's night out that had ended in confessions and tears. A sombre mood descended until I threw an envelope over the desk with a grin.

"Present." I pointed at the envelope containing two tickets to the Annual Cullen Charity Ball and then back at her, bracing myself for the squeal that she issued when she realised what it was.

"Seriously?"

"Yep. Also, I booked you an appointment with Alice, Edward's sister, she owns a boutique in Freemont and will totally hook you up with a kick ass dress."

"That's too much." She shook her head and pushed the envelope back towards me.

"Nonsense. Ang', you and Ben have been amazing friends to me and I just wanted to say thank you. I would be insulted it you refused."

"In that case…." She stood up, snatched the envelope and skipped out of the room. "Thank you!"

X~X~X

With all of my thoughts about how to get Royce fired running through my head I trudged through work that I would usually fly through. I knew for sure that I couldn't work closely with the man but I didn't know how to make it clear to Marcus. I couldn't run around telling tales outside of school. I had told Angela because she already had the cliff notes and I needed someone who would understand my reticence to work with the man.

There was no way around this. I was stuck working with him and I was going to hate every second of it. I could only hope that Rosalie was right, that he would fuck things up all by himself and I wouldn't have to worry about it. Hopefully that implosion would occur when I was at a minimum safe distance. Bring on maternity leave.

"Lunch?" Ben shocked me out from under my cloud of doom with his question.

"Sorry, I have plans." I gave him a smile as he wandered off and grabbed my bag to head to lunch.

I had arranged to meet Charlotte in the atrium of my building and she was fiddling nervously with her hands when I got down there. I took a moment to look her over and really absorb the fact that she looked so much like me it was freaky. I always thought I had a lot of Charlie in me, but I was more like my Mother than I had realised. It must have been so hard for him to even look at me when she had first left.

That was maybe why he worked so much during that time.

"Hi." My heels clicked off the marble of the floor and she looked up when I approached, stopping chewing the inside of her cheek when she saw me.

"Hi." She smiled cautiously, as did I. This was new to both of us and neither of us knew how to proceed. Where's Jasper and his amazing super power of calmness when you need him?

"What do you fancy for lunch?" I asked, nodding my head towards the door.

"I'll eat pretty much anything, the unhealthier the better." She smiled a little and I found myself returning it.

"Me too. Edward's all about the healthy because he's a doctor but I love junk food."

"Let's get the unhealthiest thing on the menu. And then have some cake."

"I like your thinking."

We ended up in a generic restaurant close to my work and we both ordered a burger, fries and creamy sides. Getting to know her was easier than I had feared, it turns out we both favour the realm of sarcasm and she could be a little surreal too. We talked all through lunch, never mentioning our mother because we automatically knew that if we were going to have a relationship of any kind then it had to be completely separated from her.

I groaned loudly with contentment when I managed the last bite of my burger, rubbing my tummy absently and muttering words down to Simba about how Daddy had better not find out about our unhealthy binge.

"You're pregnant?" Charlotte asked me, shock written across her face as mine flamed at my idiocy of forgetting that I hadn't told her.

"Yeah." I admitted. "Four months."

"How long have you and Edward been together?" She leaned forward with excitement shining in her eyes.

"Um, about four months?" I scrunched my face up, waiting for the look of judgement to fall across hers.

"Wow." She grinned. "A sister and a niece or nephew to boot? This is better than I had imagined. Do you know what it is?"

"No." I laughed a little with relief. "You can't tell _her_. She doesn't deserve to know."

"I'm not about to lie to my Mother, Bella, though I understand your reasoning. I won't tell her, but if she ever explicitly asked me if you have kids then I'll have to say something."

"Ok." I nodded, it was the best I could expect. "Charlotte? Do you want to do this again?"

"I'd love that. I have to head off to class now. Give me a call?"

"Sure." I smiled up at her as she left and felt really quite pleased with myself for not ruining lunch with any resentment. I still had to chant "it's not her fault" quite a few times, but it was lessening.

Edward called as I wandered back to work, enjoying the vague warmth that was lingering and thinking about how genuinely nice Charlotte seemed to be.

"Hello?"

"I love you too." I smirked, thinking about the post-it I had slapped onto his head this morning. "I miss you when I don't wake up to you beside me."

"Aw, you big sap. I hate leaving you sleeping in my warm bed when I have to leave for work."

"I have to tell you, I may or may not have staked a claim on your bed and I think its loyalties may lie with me now."

"Nu-uh." I laughed. "That bed knows what side its bread is buttered on."

"The only way to resolve this is for us to each go to opposite sides of the room and dangle pillows until it chooses its master."

"You're nuts."

"You love it." I heard him move and heard the rustle of my bed sheets. Mental images of a naked Edward wrapped in my sheets teased through my brain and I almost clotheslined an old woman as I walked along the street. "I'm going to head out and check my mail, maybe grab some clothes."

"You can use the washer and dryer, you know?" I smirked.

"Uh, there's a specific shirt I want to wear." He lied.

I was wise to his sneaky little game, if I was averse to it I would have voiced it by now, but I was happy to let him continue. I knew he was slowly but surely moving his stuff into my place. He thought I didn't notice that his drawer had started to breed clothes and now another of my drawers was stuffed with the offspring. I had also spotted the suits and shirts he had snuck into my closet.

"I was going to grab a movie when I'm out too. That new one with the British kid with the stupid hair?" He spoke the last sentence with disdain.

"Oh, yeah, I've been looking forward to that one."

"Hmmm. I don't know what you see in him. I have better hair than him." I could hear the pout in his voice.

"Could you do a British accent for me? Maybe later when we are both back under the sheets?"

"Bella, I'm not a toy, I don't have a switch for accents."

"Go on, try it, please? Say something British to me." I sniggered.

"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request." He blurted, full on Keira Knightley accent in place and I almost collided with a wall.

"Practice that, but be inclined to acquiesce when I get home." I breathed, trying to save face my glaring at my shoe heel and walking back into work. He laughed loudly in my ear.

"For you, sure thing, my love. See you when you get home."

We hung up and I managed to control my breathing when I walked into the elevator, ignoring the other person in there as I replied to a text from Alice. The man beside me cleared his throat and I looked up at him to realise that it was Royce.

"Hello again, Ms. Swan."

"Hello, Royce." I enjoyed seeing him try to hide a little bit of irritation at me using his first name. Silence hung in the air and he stared at me as I continued to appraise him and text at the same time. It obviously disconcerted him that I could multitask.

"I know who you are." He told me, the ding of the elevator ascending the many floors the only sound in the metal box I was temporarily trapped in.

"I know who you are too." I stared him down and cursed my luck that the usually filled to the gills elevator was empty. The doors slid open and he broke our staring match.

"Well." He said, walking out and not looking at me again.

"Yes." I responded, walking the other way.

X~X~X

"So, do you want to talk to me about last night?" I asked Edward, leaning against his naked chest and stifling a little yawn.

That man had acquiesced all over the place when I arrived home. Let me tell you, Edward Cullen whispering dirty words in a British accent as he thrusts into you is a glorious moment in time. Top trump in my best welcome homes ever.

He sighed and pressed against me tighter, his fingers tracing patterns on my bare skin. He was staring intently at his fingers as if he could see my physical reaction to his touch. I would be covered in finger swipes of heat if it were possible for him to see it.

"I lost a patient." He muttered into my hair.

"I'm sorry."

"She was pregnant and I, well, I needed to come home and reassure myself that you were here and safe and…mine."

I ducked my head into his neck to hide my goofy little grin that appeared when he said "come home".

"I am, you know, all of those things." I kissed his neck.

"It was so overwhelming, it almost drowned me."

I tightened my grip around him because I didn't have words even though I knew exactly what he was feeling. There was one place I went when life was becoming overwhelming. I hadn't needed to go there for a little while but it occurred to me that maybe Edward would enjoy it.

"Get some pants on; I'm taking you to my secret place." I tossed his jeans at him and he smirked up at me.

"Baby, I've been in your secret place a few times in the last couple of hours."

"Mind out of the gutter, Cullen, or you don't get to see the secret place for a while."

"You wouldn't deny me, particularly if I spoke like this." He had hopped out of bed, run his nose along the length of my neck and started talking with the lush British accent he had suddenly become so good at. My knees did a little reactionary jerk at the wave of lust that crashed through me but I held firm. I pushed his chest with the flat of my hands and narrowed my eyes at him.

"New rule. You aren't allowed to do that to me when I'm trying to show you something special." He pouted and fluttered his impossibly long eyelashes at me. At times I worry that he would be hotter than me if he was a woman.

"Sorry." He kissed my cheek and handed me my shirt. "But when your boobs are out and you look like I've sexed you up then I can't help myself." He grinned and left the room.

X~X~X

There was a new glint in Edward's eye when he looked at me after I parked in front of one of my favourite places in Seattle. He looked a bit scared, truth be told. Much like when I scrambled about on my bedroom floor trying to remember the code into my floor safe. I thought I would remember the date when I realised that I wouldn't be able to be a horse when I grew up but that shit is apparently easily forgotten if you don't punch it into a keypad regularly.

"Are you going to kill me?" He joked and took my hand when we walked into the place.

"Only if you keep that scared rabbit look on your face." I stuck my tongue out at him and he pulled me into him, his arm around my shoulder.

"Hey, Bullseye, haven't seen you in a while." A set of white teeth flashed at me and I smiled back.

"Hey Garrett. This is Edward, I thought he deserved to be initiated."

"Cool. An hour?"

"Perfect." I saluted Garrett and pulled Edward through to the shooting range.

When things are tough for me I like to shoot things.

Charlie taught Emmett and me to shoot when we were in junior high. He thought that I should know how to both defend myself and shoot in a straight line. He said it was important for me to know that a gun was to be feared yet I should be competent in the use of them. I stopped listening halfway through his lecture because I just wanted to shoot. It is the most perfect way to enable someone in their own belief of their strength. I thought so, at least.

Then again I was the kid at school who would always save the insects from being killed, even by accident. I don't think that's particularly weird, but kids are cruel. No wonder I wanted to be a horse.

"Bella?"

"Sorry." I had zoned out while taking my lane and arranging my ammo. I set the spare clips in a row and put my goggles on my head before handing Edward his set plus the mufflers. "When life threatens to drown me I remind myself I can fight back." I told him, kissing his cheek and motioning back to my gun.

"You are not like anyone I have ever known."

"I'm not special." I shrugged. "I'm just me."

"I'm going to risk being the corniest man in the world, but fuck it, you are extraordinarily special to me."

"You totally pull off corny." I laughed and placed his mufflers over his ears before doing my own.

I admit that I was showing off when I emptied a clip into the head and heart of the target. I wanted to show off one of my very few skills. Edward watched me with a smile and I winked back at him when I hit the button to pull the target forward. He tried to hide his surprise when I showed him the target but I saw it and didn't mind.

Edward pretended to not know what he was doing so I wrapped myself around him from behind and we emptied a clip together.

"This was actually fun." Edward admitted after I packed up my Glock and said a friendly goodbye to Garrett. He winked a goodbye at me and Edward scowled. It was cute. I wanted to mount him.

Edward, that is, not Garrett.

Though there was that one night when Garrett and I got seduced by the talk of metal and velocity and kickback. But that was life pre Edward.

"I don't think I'm going to take it up as a hobby, I'm not the biggest fan of guns. Though watching you with one was hot." He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"You're completely depraved."

"Yes, I am. Take your top off." He smirked. "Come on, Bella, pip-pip, what-ho, cheerio." The accent was back in force.

I had created a monster.

I broke three laws getting him back into my bed.

X~X~X

**A/N: Hey guys, thanks so much for the patience while waiting for this! If you liked it then please review it. Ta. **

**Big thanks to Ladyeire3, her feedback is invaluable.**

**I'm going to post a companion story to this for outtakes and things, so if you are interested in that then put me on author alert. The first one should be up today/tomorrow following a few edits. If you guys have any ideas for outtakes and stuff then let me know and I'll give it some consideration. **

**I'm on twitter…I rarely post about twilight and frequently post about being annoyed or being happy or my new pillows or my studies…maybe you don't want to follow me after that admittance.**

**Anyway, sorry for the wait. I totally suck. Chapter 17 is almost half way done though so there shouldn't be a massively long wait.**

**See you guys later…thanks for sticking around :D xoxo**


	17. When Edward and Bella Make a Decision

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or any other part of The Saga...I own these words and any mistakes, yeah they're all mine!**

**Chapter 17 – Edward **

**When Edward and Bella Make a Decision**

"Slutty nurse? Slutty cat? Slutty superhero?" Bella holds three different outfits up and shakes them at me while I shake my head.

"Why does it have to be a slutty anything?"

I am, in this moment, perplexed.

"Because, tradition dictates that Halloween is the annual dress-up-as-a-slutty-something holiday." She sits on the bed in front of me after hanging the aforementioned slutty outfits back in the closet.

"Oh, of course, my bad. I should have realised." Her hands reach out and she puts her palms on my bare chest, trying to fit them both over my beating heart. Her hair falls into her eyes and she huffs a breath out to move it without removing her hands from me. I do it for her instead, smoothing it away from her eyes and catching the corner of her mouth twitch.

"Slutty cop?" She asks, her fingers beginning to tap on my chest in time with my heartbeat.

I'm fighting a caveman roar. I think she can feel it build in my chest cavity. If it kills me I will make sure that she doesn't leave this house as a slutty anything.

"Bella, I'm going to say this as nicely and with as little misogyny and caveman ownership as I can, ok?" She nods sweetly and gazes up at me while I grind my teeth. "I absolutely forbid you to leave this house wearing one of those outfits."

She roars with laughter, her hands leaving my skin infinitesimally before smacking me forcefully.

I am, once again, Jack's perplexed appendix.

"I'm just fucking with you." She manages to splutter out between laughs. Her body falls back and her hands leave my skin. She places the soles of her feet against my chest in their place, her toes tapping in time with her laughs. "Alice told me you'd completely try to maintain a respectful disinclination."

I growl and propel myself forward, nestling between her thighs and silencing her laughs with my mouth on hers. Her body shakes below mine and it does unmentionable things to my dick. She writhes under my touch and my mouth roams freely across her face as her breath dusts over my skin. I'm careful to not put my whole weight on her, not wanting to pin Simba in an uncomfortable way, but I pin her to the mattress and let my lips trail down her neck and across her collar bone.

"I'm not sorry." She whisper-gasps into my ear when my hand cups her breast and her body arches into my touch. "It was funny."

I remain silent, catching her eye and silencing her with the look I give her.

I could give two fucks about her little prank. What I'm focused on is her body, her heat and her little mewls of pleasure when I pinch her nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

Taking me to the shooting range was a brilliant idea in theory. Seeing Bella wield a gun so competently was probably one of the hottest things I had ever seen in my life. But I need human connection when life threatens to overwhelm me and in the past two weeks I've been getting as much interaction with her as possible.

My mouth closes over her pinched nipple, my tongue soothing the tender skin and I hum with satisfaction when her hands grip deep into my hair and she tugs my mouth to her other breast. Her hands run across my shoulders, feeling the muscles under my skin and her legs grip my waist. I prise them apart slightly and move my mouth across her skin. I press kisses to her belly.

There is a slight bump where there was once flatness. Inside there lays my child. He is nourished by the wonderful woman currently gripping the sheets on the bed we lie upon entwined.

"I adore you." I whisper into her soft skin. A message to both of them that only one can hear right now.

I venture further south. She is bare and open, ready and waiting for my touch. It doesn't matter if it is my fingers, my tongue or my dick. Bella feels our connection regardless of the delivery method. We need to merely touch and the electricity neither of us can explain flows freely.

I kiss her pubic bone, my tongue dancing down and around her slick clit and I lose myself in her taste and smell. I can hear her words of encouragement, her hands in my hair tug and angle my head. Her hips buck and grind against my face and I slide two fingers into her, curving them to hit that little spongy bump that makes her howl my name.

I put a hand on her chest, massaging the breast I land on and feeling the reactions coursing through her by measuring her breathing. I know that one little nip will tip her over the edge, it will make her clamp around my fingers. I press firmly forward with my fingers and pull them down to her entrance to circle as I graze my teeth across her clit and she screams my name, thrashing and bucking against me holding her in place.

My dick is straining to be inside her. It twitches painfully so I give her little resting time, I kiss and lick my way up her trembling body. I relish her taste, it's like honey, sunshine and everything that has ever meant anything to me.

I reach her face and cup it, kissing her and thrusting my tongue into her mouth. She can taste herself on my tongue. Her head falls back when I pull my mouth away to suck on her neck. I push my dick into the warm, wet and welcoming entrance. She pulls my head back to hers and moulds her mouth to mine when I thrust into her, thighs tighten around me and I thrust again. I hold back, scared to cause anything that may harm our cub. I go as fast and as hard as I dare, she murmurs for me to go faster and harder.

I want to move this bed with the power of my hips. I want her to wobble when she stands up. I want her to walk like John Wayne just after he got off his horse to drink his milk. But I can wait. This is enough for me because it is her. When there is no longer a third life lying between us, that is when I will punch holes in the wall with the bedhead.

I capture her moans in my mouth, absorbing them and releasing them as my own. My balls tighten and I begin to thrust erratically, bringing myself to orgasm and emptiness as the walls encompassing me begin to contract again.

Together we finish, I spill into her and collapse to the side where she immediately burrows into my arms again. Breathing heavily I pepper kisses along her hairline. She bites her lip, gathering air to say something before pausing.

"Ok, maybe I am sorry." She smirks. "Particularly when you can do that to me."

I return her smirk and we both close our eyes.

"No slutty outfits?"

"No…well…maybe when if you ask me nicely. Definitely not for Halloween."

"Good."

X~X~X

Something had been niggling at me since I stood in the operating theatre and watched someone else work on my patient. It was something that was difficult for me to admit and it was selfish. It would mean more time away from Bella and missing more Sim's childhood than I was happy about.

My father was right.

I should be a surgeon.

I couldn't believe how much my want for this was beginning to tangle around my body. It was threading through my veins and soon it was going to be all consuming.

I also couldn't believe that I was even considering something that would mean losing time with the most important people in my life. It would mean more hours for a longer period of time and I really didn't want to miss Sim's first steps or first word because I was elbow deep in someone's bowel. But then I thought about how being elbow deep in someone's bowel could mean that they got more time with the people they loved and how there was a possibility that I would save more lives this way.

I wrote a list of pros and cons. The pro column was filled with stream of consciousness ramblings of what I thought I could achieve. The con column was stalled after I wrote Bella's name, followed by Cub and missing them.

The most irritating thing to me was that Bella would understand. She wouldn't tell me not to do it, she would encourage me and if our child was anything like her then he would understand too.

I tossed the list aside and looked around. I was in Bella's house, it was creepy the speed at which I had come to consider this place home to me too. I should bite the bullet and ask her if I could move in but I didn't want to spook her. Sometimes I think of her as a baby deer, like if I make too sudden a move I will scare her and she'll bolt. I know she won't and that she's stronger than me but I don't want to risk losing her.

My stomach howled loudly and I realised it was lunch time. I made the executive decision to surprise Bella at work. It only took twenty minutes to throw together a not too shabby picnic lunch and get on my way to her office.

I didn't like her going to work at the best of times, mainly because I selfishly want her with me at all times, but after she told me about Royce and his asshole history with Rosalie I detested her going to work. Jasper, Alice and I talked it over and we decided that one of us should meet her for lunch as often as possible. Not that any one of us thought that she was in trouble with him around but because we are protectors by nature.

Angela waved when she saw me across the office and gestured up, indicating that Bella was in a meeting with the bosses upstairs. I settled into her office and waited. I got bored sitting in the chair beside the door so moved to her chair behind the desk. There was a couple of picture frames sitting on the desk, the pictures inside were of Rosalie, Emmett and Charlie, but I noticed the sonogram picture of the baby tucked into one of the frames and the other had a little picture of me tucked into it. It was sweet and made me realise that I didn't have any pictures of Bella, aside from a few I took with my phone.

None filthy. She wouldn't allow it, even after I promised not to include her face. I thought I had bartered her effectively enough to at least get a picture of a nipple but no dice

I heard Bella before I saw her. Her heels clicked along the floor and her voice drifted through the open door of her office. I realised I was still sitting in her seat when she walked in and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Lunch?" I jumped up and gestured to the food with a flourish like I was the glamorous assistant on a game show.

"Perfect." She smiled and I hurried over to plant a kiss on her mouth, giving her a little dip amidst some catcalls from people who could see. Bella's face flamed red and she shut her office door after prying her way out of my arms.

I sat on her chair and pulled her down onto my lap, resting my head on her shoulder.

"To what do I owe this honour?" She asked as she reached across for a slice of cucumber.

"I'm a needy fool and can't be away from you for too long."

"So, it has nothing to do with me working with Royce and you, Alice and Jasper feeling the need to babysit me?" She nudged my shoulder and I looked up at her sheepishly.

"It's not that we feel the need to babysit you, Bella, we just love you. Too much?"

"Kind of. I'm an adult and I've managed to reach the grand old age of 28 without having a twenty four hour guard."

"I just don't want you around men like that." Bella put a forkful of salad in my mouth to shut me up.

"It's inevitable that I will be around men like that, Edward, because unfortunately they populate the earth. While ninety per cent of men are brilliant like you, Jasper and Emmett there are still men like Royce everywhere. You have to trust that I know how to handle this." I nodded and chewed, realising that it was a futile effort to argue against it.

"Sorry." I mumbled.

"Not that I _do_ know how to handle it, but soon enough I won't have to deal with him." I understood what she was telling me, that even though she didn't have a plan she could still handle herself. She was an adult and was effectively telling me to back off and let her work things out. She took my hand and together we rubbed her stomach. I shifted from under her and knelt in front of her, pressing my face to her belly.

"You know, Sim', you're Mommy is one tough cookie. Doesn't mean you should take advantage of her, though. Be gentle with her, she's precious." Bella massaged my scalp as I spoke, scratching through my hair with a rhythm that almost had me purring. I could have taken a nap right there in her lap if not for Angela barging in.

"Oh! Shit, sorry!" She threw a folder on the desk and made a sharp exit. "Hi. Bye."

I broke away from Bella, remembering our surroundings, and sat at the other chair. We finished our lunch with the door slightly ajar because I couldn't trust myself not to crawl under her desk and do unmentionably naughty things under her skirt. She was wearing some hot bondage looking boots and I was beginning to worry myself over how much attention I paid to her footwear. I didn't worry myself for too long once I thought about getting her home and me getting her out of everything but her boots.

"Have you sorted an outfit for Alice's Halloween party then? Because I should go and get myself one too."

"Are we going to be a sickening matching outfits couple?" She crinkled her nose.

"You don't want to?" Thank God.

"No, I think we're in danger of becoming one of those couples that make other people sick as it is. If we do matching outfits then we'll tip over the edge." She bit her lip and grimaced while I laughed.

"Yeah, that is a risk. But, it isn't our fault that we are pretty damn awesome together and want everyone to know." She rolled her eyes at my comment and I kissed her goodbye.

I closed the door to her office and stuck a hastily written note to the door.

_Herein lies my world – E. Cullen 2010_

Yes, we are sickening, but I didn't give a shit who thought it because they didn't matter to me.

X~X~X

Fuck Halloween.

Seriously, it can lick my balls.

Fine, maybe I should have left myself more than a few hours to get a costume on the actual day. The actual day being a Sunday. We live in modern times, I expect costume stores to be open and to be full to the brim with choices for me. In the end I went to seven different places and I ended up grabbing the last costume left in the last store I visited. I was going to look fucking ridiculous.

Every year Alice hosts a Halloween party the weekend before we do the family charity ball. Alice is all about any holiday because they give her an excuse to plan an amazing party and she loves hosting shit like this. We have a tenuous link to Ireland through Dad's side of the family so she goes crazy for St. Paddy's day. If she could dye herself green without any lasting repercussions then she would. Jasper and me too. We wouldn't get a chance to tell her to back off, it'd be a blink and you're already green situation.

She explodes tinsel at Christmas and arranges chocolate egg hunts for underprivileged kids at Easter. Actually, that's the one I don't mind, because the look on those kid's faces when they find an egg is pretty damn heart-warming.

There's a baby store of some description next to the costume shop and I can't help myself from going in. I wander about for a little bit, picking up some clothes but avoiding the typical pink and blue colours. I find a little scrap of brown/gold fluff and once I realise what it is I have to buy it. Before I know what I'm doing I hand the cashier my card and end up paying close to five hundred dollars on baby stuff.

I browse the cribs because Bella and I still have to speak to the guy Rosalie and Emmett hired to build us one. I have a few ideas about what we should have and take a couple of pictures of the cribs with my phone.

"Hi, can I help you with anything?" A small redhead is at my elbow and I almost knock her out when I jerk because she startled me.

"Uh, no, thanks. Just looking." I always feel really apologetic when I say that, like I should be buying the whole place out.

"Looking for a gift? You're sister or brother having a baby?" Her eye closes in on my bare ring finger and I sigh a little.

"No, my girlfriend and I are having a baby." I say pointedly. "We are having a crib built so I was looking for some ideas."

I extricate myself from the sales lady and hightail it back to Bella, pretty much defeated but also positive that she was going to love the clothes I bought for Simba.

X~X~X

"Bella?" I cram myself through the door holding all of the bags plus my costume. Normal people would make two trips, or edge in the door sideways. Not me. I am repelled backwards with a bounce but squeeze through on the second try.

"Edward? You can't see me until you're in costume!"

"Fine." I dump my bags and go to the downstairs toilet.

It takes me close to twenty minutes to arrange myself inside my dumbass costume. By this point I am a seriously grumpy motherfucker because I managed to give myself cramp and smack myself in the face with my own goddam hand. I know I'm pouting when I stomp out of the bathroom but Bella is waiting for me and I can't help but smile at her.

"Wait here." She laughs and disappears only to come back wielding what I know to be an eyeliner pencil.

"What are you doing?"

"Trust me." I let her draw on my chin and then she collapses with laughter, straight down onto the floor and holding her sides. "What?" My mouth twitches because her laughter is infectious.

"We…weren't….goingtodomatchingoutfits!"

I look down at myself then at her. She's dressed as a cowgirl, complete with boots…I really am turning into a shoe fetishist…and big round rosy cheeks. A Stetson sits at an angle on top of her head, pigtails poking out the sides.

I look down at myself. Dressed as a space ranger and I don't really get it until she gasps out an explanation.

"I'm Jessie from Toy Story. You're Buzz Lighter. They are basically a couple in Toy Story 3." She's still on the floor laughing.

I chuckle along with her, diving through my bags to show Bella the best thing that I bought today. Finally my fingers make contact with the fuzzy fabric and I pull it out triumphantly.

"I bought some stuff for Sim'." I tell her, beaming from cheek to cheek with a self-satisfied smile. Her eyes go wide as she realises that what I have in my hand is a tiny lion sleep suit thing, replete with little mane around the neck and covered in a fuzzy golden fur. No one else will get it, when we dress our cub in this, but the meaning will be there for Bella and me to bask in.

"It's the most adorable fudging thing I've ever seen!" I crouch down beside her and let her rub her fingers across the fabric. I love how she is trying to not swear, mostly they have been replaced by foodstuffs and sugary treats.

"_You're_ the most adorable fudging thing I've ever seen." I tell her, it's true and I can't get over it. She propels herself forward and knocks me to the ground, giggling and kissing my face. I work my way to her mouth and start to deepen her kisses, thinking that we could get in a round of afternoon delight before we get picked up for the party.

"Ahem." Emmett clears his throat and stands in the doorway. I groan and distance myself from Bella which is almost painful to do. "This is the most fucked up thing I've ever seen. Seriously, Toy Story is ruined for me now that I've seen you two rutting on the floor."

"Shut the fudge up Emmett." Bella mutters with a smile before appraising his outfit. "What, exactly, are you meant to be?"

"I'm Winnie the Pooh."

Bella and I collapse against each other. I'm almost crying with laughter, completely incapacitated by the spasms of it running through me.

"Fuck you both." He mutters, before turning on his heel and shaking his bear tail at us. "Rosalie made me." He pouts while Bella manages to finally stand up and help unsmudge the chin swirl she had drawn on me before.

"Right, to the party…and beyond."

We all groan at my words but finally leave, high on the endorphins of laughter.

X~X~X

If Alice hadn't turned into such a fashion monster she most definitely would have been a party planner. She revels in this stuff. I'm not great with the details, I know what the end result should be but to get there seems like an awful lot of effort. I am often in awe at the organisational skills of my little sister. We arrived along with Tigger and Winnie the Pooh, an hour or so earlier than most of the guests were told.

Alice answered the door suspiciously calm, she had friends everywhere and one was apparently a make-up artist or something because she was frighteningly gruesome as a zombie. Patches of skin were peeling up her bare arms and shoulders, while there was a realistic bite mark on her face.

"You look awesome!" Bella hugged Alice hello, the three women disappeared in seconds before we were joined by Jasper. I had no idea what he was meant to be. Emmett and I looked at each other, hoping that one of us could clue the other in but in the end we shrugged completely at a loss.

"Alice tells me that you have an uncomfortable conversation coming up." Jasper casually mentioned, flopping down onto one of the temporary seats Alice had arranged. All of their furniture had been moved out and replaced with rented seating.

"Two. I think." I admitted, grabbing a few beers from the tub of ice sitting in the corner. I opened them and passed them out.

"What?" Emmett looked from Jasper to me for an explanation.

"I'm thinking about focusing on being a surgeon, which means I have to talk to Bella about it as well as my Father." He nodded and went back to his beer.

"You know the issue here isn't either of those conversations, right?" Jasper emptied his beer in one. He once told me the secret to that was opening your throat and tipping it down. I advised him that kind of thing would make him a really good wife one day. Then he pinned me until I said sorry.

"I don't know what you're getting at. Also, what the fuck are you meant to be?"

"_You're_ the problem, douche. Your guilt and your desire are completely messing with your mind." He snatched my beer and emptied that one. "I'm Robert Burns. Moron."

The tartan suddenly made sense.

X~X~X

Four hours later and I was drunk. The world was no longer spinning on a normal rotation. I was leaning against Bella so that I wouldn't fall over. She was indulging my gibbering nonsense with such grace that I couldn't stop kissing her head. I had become suddenly so very fascinated by her hair. It smelled fresh and clean. I undid her braids and ran my hands through the thick strands, amazed by the sensations that danced across my palm.

She batted my hands away with a laugh and resumed talking to a friend of Alice's who had, in past years, tried to take my trousers off without very much talking. I pointed at her, then pointed to my trousers.

"No!" I said firmly. I barely registered her aghast face and Bella's snort of laughter. I slid back against the wall, landing on my ass with a thump. Jasper flipped me the bird from across the room then came over. He had adopted a Scottish accent for the evening and it was far superior to my English one.

Asshole.

"Ach, laddie, did ye just tell that lass that she couldnae have yer boaby?"

"Aye."

"Yer a cruel man, Cullen, y'eve just broken the poor lassie's hert."

"Timorous beastie." I mumbled before getting to my knees and hugging Bella's waist. The woman who had been there moments ago was gone and Bell sank down to the floor with me, wrapping her arms around me and rocking us. This turned out to be an awesome thing because the rocking was the antidote to the odd spinning the world had started to do.

I was only vaguely aware that I was being pretty tragic. I knew better than to mix beer, whiskey, wine and vodka but for some reason I had decided that the normal rules didn't apply. I shifted until my face was at Bella's stomach. She didn't stop me from untucking her shirt and pressing my mouth to her belly. I sighed with happiness, pressing my ear to her, trying to hear the heartbeat but finding I could only hear the blood rushing around my own head.

"Hey Sim'." I whispered. "I don't want to miss a second of your life. I want so much to be a surgeon, I think I always have but never did it to spite my own Daddy. I hope I never inspire such belligerence in you. You'll always know how much I love you, I'll make sure I say it to you every single day. Whatever you become, I'll always be proud of you."

"Edward?" I heard Alice but didn't look up.

"Did you hear that? That's Aunt Alice, she'll never steer you wrong. She's been the best sister, seriously. I hope you have a sister one day. I'll have to check with Mommy first before I promise you that one."

I heard laughter. I think I had drawn quite the audience, but nothing existed outside of the bubble I had imagined around myself and Bella.

"I've been sneaky, Sim', but I think Mommy's on to me. I should probably just ask if I can move in, right? What if she says no?" I mumbled this last one, suddenly conscious of Bella and others being able to hear me.

"Edward?" Bella tilted my head with her fingertips so that I she could look at my face. "Come with me." I struggled off and up, offering my hand to help her up. I wobbled a little but held firm. She led me through the house and into Jasper's office, unlocking the door with a key that seemed to just materialise from nowhere.

Bella sat me down in Jasper's chair and sat on my lap, her hands on my neck and her thumbs gently caressing around my ears.

"I'm so fucking drunk." I let my head fall onto her shoulder and let out a giant sigh. "I'm sorry."

"I don't care about the drunkenness, you're funny and even sweeter when you are." I felt her kiss my head and I grinned against her shoulder. "You want to move in?" She whispered.

"God, yes. I hate being away from you, I love your house. We're having a baby, we should be in the same place."

"I agree."

"You do?" I was surprised, I jerked my head up and accidently knocked her chin.

"Shi…sugar! Ow."

"I'm sorry!" I couldn't believe I had managed to inflict pain upon her.

"It's alright, I'm fine." She laughed and moved her jaw from side to side to make sure.

"Don't take it back."

"I'm not taking it back."

"I'm moving in?" I was bouncing a little on the chair with excitement, at the thought of yet another step in the direction of a bright future with Bella and Simba.

"You're moving in."

X~X~X

**A/N: Reviews are better than a drunk Edward, just saying. **

**Massive thanks to Ladyeire3 for catching a couple of British-isms that had slipped through.**

**I was tempted to wait until I had my 400****th**** review before posting this but lord knows how long that would have taken so instead I'm posting it as an extra special New Year treat.**

**Happy New Year! **

**Rec: **_**For Whom the Bell Tolls – CyraBear**_**. Honestly, it's super good and I was sucked in almost immediately. It should be in my favourites if you want to read it :D**

**Next chapter will be as soon as I am able.**

**xoxo**


	18. When Edward Discovers a Lie

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Twilight but I own these words…and guitar hero warriors of rock…good times. **

**Chapter 18 – Bella**

**When Edward Learns a Truth**

I've never lived with a man before. Technically Edward hadn't been officially living with me all this time. Now that we had made a decision, albeit a drunken one on his part, I was very scared. I had a lot of bad habits that had formed over the years of living in my space. I was a bitch in the mornings and had thus far managed to hide this from him. He was going to be subjected to Bitch-Bella, and he was going to have to guard his special Edward area that I loved so much from stealth attacks.

There are so many things that can go wrong here, and I really don't want to fudge this up.

I know he'll have a whole bunch of bad habits too. I fully expect for the balled up socks in corners to really get on my boobs. I suspect that he'll have an issue with my goody drawer too, a drawer so sacred to me that I had managed to keep it hidden so far. It's on my side of the bed and is full of things that make me drool. That's right, candy and everything bad for me.

He is going to find it and make me replace my Reese's Pieces with carrot sticks and apples.

He can't ever be told about that drawer.

He'll shake that list of food I can't eat right in front of my face, pointing to peanut butter and then reminding me about paté. The ass.

I wake up on top of Edward. He's pinning me down onto his body and we are breathing in unison. I really need to go to the bathroom so I spend five minutes trying to extricate myself from his arms without waking him. I've learned that when he has been drinking he snores. They aren't near the scale of Emmett snores, sharing a room with him was an exercise in futility some nights. Edward's snores are gruff, almost like words that start in his chest and rumble like a freight train through his throat and out his mouth.

I don't want to risk his hangover wrath so I manage to slide myself off him. I could have lifted myself away from his skin, but I'm depraved and who doesn't want to slide their body against their hot boyfriend of a morning?

I throw my hair up in a tie and jump in the shower, washing the remnants of my Jessie the cowgirl make-up off my face and finally feeling a semblance of being awake. Then I realised I needed to pee again.

Stupid running water.

I can tell this is going to seriously shred my patience by the time Cub decides to make an appearance. My stomach lurched at the thought of labour and I stumbled at the top of the stairs, latching on to the bannister before I pulled an accidental Princess Diana. Still unsteady, I planted my ass on the floor and slid down the stairs on it. Just to be safe.

When I was in my early twenties the thought of being pregnant completely grossed me out. The thought of something growing inside of me made my stomach churn. Maybe it was watching all the Alien movies, or maybe it was because I just didn't understand what it meant. That when it actually happened and I was over the shock I would feel completely joyous about it. I was surprised at how womanly it made me feel.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go all Earth Mother and commune with the moon, but it was giving me a buoyant little skip to my walk. Cub and Edward. They have a skipping foot each.

I'm grateful that Edward doesn't have to work this morning because I'm determined to make him a kick ass breakfast to help his hangover. In the past I've always craved anything remotely breakfast like when suffering from a hangover so when I finally haul myself upright I start to cook things. I make pancakes from scratch and decide on waffles too. It dawns on me that maybe I'm not doing this for Edward but for me because I'm suddenly craving all the stuff I'm cooking.

Everything except the eggs.

The smell of cooking eggs sends me running for the toilet and I hug that porcelain bowl like it has just saved me from a shark. My stomach empties but my body keeps trying to make me throw up an internal organ. It takes twenty minutes before I manage to convince the throwing up muscles that yes, I do in fact, need both lungs and would enjoy to be the proud owner of a liver and two healthy kidneys, thanks very much.

Black acrid smoke billows from the kitchen and I realise that my smoke alarm is blaring, something the rushing blood and retching body had blocked until now.

Edward stands, almost naked, wafting a cloth at the alarm and I rush through to open the back door. He looks at me doing it like I've just discovered blow jobs and he's my test subject.

"Brilliant idea." He beams and I'm confused by his cheery demeanour.

I leave him to turn the damn alarm off and I poke at the destroyed food on the stove top. I start bawling my eyes out, stupid great big snotty sobs at being a totally inept breakfast maker and I drop to the floor to sit cross legged, my head in my hands. I can feel Edward staring at me, a little unsure of my reaction. Normally, I'd be laughing at myself and already on damage control.

"Don't just stand there and stare at me." I yelp, jolting Edward to action and in seconds he has me off the floor and in his arms. I stop crying because I'm so shocked by how easily he picked me up.

"Better?" He kisses my temple and I smile.

"Thanks."

"What was that all about?"

"Hormones?" I take a guess because it's the only thing that makes sense to me. Nothing else springs to mind that may have made me react that way to what was, essentially, not a very big deal. "I wanted to make you breakfast, because I thought you would be hung-over."

He walks us over to the table and sets me down on top of it. When he goes to walk over to survey the breakfast damage I cling on to him by wrapping my arms and legs around him. He laughs but I won't let him go.

"That's sweet, thank you." He kisses the top of my head. "I was a little worse for wear but then I remembered what we decided last night…that is, if you still want to?"

"You move in? I said I wouldn't take it back." I kiss his chest. I can't help but kiss any part of him whenever I can. I love his skin under my lips.

"Just making sure. How about we go out for breakfast?"

"Good idea…just, don't order eggs, ok?"

X~X~X

Since my birthday I've been trying to ignore the looming shadow that is shaped like my Mother. I figured I would be able to forget all about her. I could spend time with Charlotte, forge a relationship with her, and ignore the fact that some woman had birthed me.

Turns out that was too optimistic.

I had also underestimated her capacity for fuckery.

"Tink? You're Mother called." Charlie opens the call with this little gambit and I'm worried about how he reacted to her calling him.

"She what?" Edward cocked his head to the side in a question but I shook my head. He would either get the gist of the conversation or I would fill him in afterwards but I didn't want to do it right then.

"She called me and asked me if you were pregnant. Just like that, out of the blue."

"What a bitch."

"Bella." Charlie's voice held a warning tone. For all that she had done to us he wouldn't allow me to badmouth her and he never once did in front of me either.

"Sorry." I sighed. I was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, Edward was plaiting my hair because I had just taught him how to do it. For some reason he was freaking out about not being able to do girl's hair and "what if we have a girl?" So I showed him the simplest move in the girl hair handbook. Now I looked like a Rastafarian but I didn't really care because I loved it when he played with my hair.

"I didn't tell her anything."

"Thanks, Dad. She sent me a letter last month."

"She mentioned that." I took a deep breath and broached a potentially explosive subject.

"Did you know? That she was pregnant when she left?" He paused and huffed out a little air, I could imagine it escaping from under his moustache.

"No. She told me that when she called too."

"You would have told me?"

"Of course." I needed to hear him say that, even if I did have my doubts before. This wasn't something he would have kept from me.

I sat on the floor for a while, chatting to Charlie while Edward undid some of the pleats and redid them. He was becoming quite the expert and I was worried, because it was really the only hair move I knew how to do. I could do big ones, little ones and all the sizes in between, but ask me to show you a different thing to do with long hair and I was lost.

It was over an hour later when I eventually hung up the phone. Edward immediately kissed me and I grinned because I loved how he could cheer me up with such a basic move. Not that there was anything basic about his mouth.

"We are quite the pair." He mused, kissing me again. "You with your Mommy issues and me with my Daddy issues…let's make sure Sim' doesn't ever have either of those issues. Deal?"

"Deal."

X~X~X

The day before the ball saw me trying to wangle my way out of a meeting with Royce King and fielding calls from Alice and Rosalie about when I would be finally finished with work. They were determined to have me waxed, plucked, painted and coiffed by dinner time. I don't know where they got the idea that I was a lost cause and had to be forced into this stuff. I already had my appointments booked, but when they called I had to call around and cancel my own appointments because they had made me some with them.

I was in the middle of forecasting the expansion expenditure for the next few months when my phone rang again and I answered it with exasperation evident in my voice.

"Alice, I swear to God, if you keep calling me I will hurt you in unimaginable fashion ways." I growled, tucking the phone between my cheek and shoulder so that I could still type.

"Unimaginable fashion ways?" Edward's voice laughed at me and I scowled.

"Quit it, chuckles, your sister is driving me insane."

"Do you want me to call her? Tell her to back down?"

"No. I want to finish my spread sheet and then go sit in the supply closet to calm down."

"You're lucky I love you, because your stationery fetish isn't exactly a turn on."

"Neither is your shiny new shoe fetish." I retort. Well, I lie, because there's something quite sexy about doing the deed with your shoes still on.

"Easy there, tiger, let's not be hasty." I can't help the gigglesnort that escapes me at his words.

"Edward, father of my unborn child, future house buddy, my love, what the hell do you want?"

"Nothing much, just to say I put my apartment on the market today and that I love you."

"You did? You do?"

"Yes and yes."

"I love you too. I have to go, I'll be home once your sister releases me from her grasp."

"See you tonight, I'll do dinner." He hangs up and I smile at the phone in my hand.

I do spend twenty minutes in the supply closet after finally finishing the more pressing work stuff I had to do. I have to drop a copy of it off on Marcus's desk before I leave so after one more quick flick of photocopier paper I hurry my way up to the thirteenth floor. I wish we had a seventh and half floor, but I'm not sure my suggestion would be welcome. Besides, John Malkovich totally scares me.

Royce King sat in Marcus's office like he owned the place when I opened the door after a polite knock. I took a tentative step back before stopping myself, he waved me in and I noticed Marcus wasn't there.

"Ah, Ms Swan, I was just going to come down to see you."

"You were?" I orbited the room, keeping myself as far away from him as possible. He looked like he could be harbouring some serious germs and I wanted to be as far away from that as I could be. I dropped my folder on Marcus's desk and retraced my steps back towards the door while trying to remain unruffled.

"We need you to come to dinner tomorrow night with a prospective new client, he wants to meet part of our accounts department and I suggested you."

"You did?" I was a little shocked at that but it didn't matter, I wouldn't be going and I certainly wouldn't want to go if he was involved anyway.

"Yes. I've already spoken to Marcus. Get yourself prettied up and expense it, a car will be sent for you at eight." If I was a cat I would have arched and spat and cat-growled at him for the tone he was using. Did he think he was in Mad Men?

"I'm unavailable tomorrow night."

"Make yourself available then, Ms Swan."

"No, Royce, I will not. I'm not sure who you think you are speaking to, but before addressing me again I suggest you address your tone."

I walked out of the office and almost collided with Marcus. He took one look at my face and arched an eyebrow at me, which was all I needed to realise that maybe I wasn't looking as unflustered as I had hoped.

"Marcus." I took a deep breath and smiled. "I was just explaining to Royce that I was unavailable for tomorrow night."

"As it turns out I am unavailable for tomorrow also." He hooked my arm through his and we walked away from his office. "I have cancelled the meeting. I don't think we shall be working with them in the future, Royce has been pushing them on us but I have heard some not so exemplary things."

I didn't really know what to say to that so I kept quiet. I had learned that if I was ever in doubt as to what Marcus was expecting from me I was best to keep my mouth shut and he would eventually let me know what it was.

"Bella, you and I will talk next week. I value your opinion and I have a couple of questions that I would like to pose to you."

"Of course, just let me know when."

"I will have Jane arrange a time." He patted my hand and let it drop, signalling the end of this particular conversation and also, I guessed, a sign that this was strictly confidential.

"The work you needed is on your desk."

"Thank you. I understand that you are attending the Cullen ball tomorrow evening as the guest of Edward Cullen?"

"Yes." I was surprised by his knowledge of my social life.

"He is the father of your child?" The thing with Marcus was that he never quite realised when he was running ass on fire into inappropriate.

"He is."

"An excellent family to be involved with. I golf with his father, Carlisle. Well, goodnight." He gave me a sharp nod and I was left completely confounded by the last part of the conversation.

I gathered my things and stuffed them in my bag as I made a fleeting visit to my office, I should really try to be more respectful of my bag and the treasures it holds but invariably things are squashed until they fit. I was already in the elevator when my phone started ringing again. I made a promise to myself to switch off all communication devices on Sunday as I answered.

"Alice, I'm on my goddamn way, ok?"

X~X~X

"Fish ate my feet." I yell through the house to Edward when I finally arrive home after what seemed like a lifetime of being subjected to pokes and prods. All in the name of beauty. I dump my bag and kick off my shoes before walking through the hall to the kitchen where I hear things being banged about.

"What?" Edward walks towards me looking all sexy and tousled, his face is flushed pink from being beside what I assume was a hot cooker and he actually has an apron on. He also looks suitably concerned about the state of my feet.

"There are fish that eat the dead skin off feet." I clasp my hands tight behind his neck and kiss him, stealing his warmth and his love that he happily surrenders to me.

"That's fucked up." He tells me between kisses.

"No, what's fucked up is my feet have never been softer and I kind of liked the tickles they made when they were eating my skin."

"You said fuck."

"Oh. Fudge."

We neck like teenagers in my hallway, soon to be _our_ hallway. Each of us unwilling, as always, to let the other go. I can taste the pineapple juice he just drank on his tongue and it makes me want some so I have to finally let him go. He stops me before I can fully enter the kitchen and I spot pots on the cooker emitting steam to the room.

"Wait, you can't go in there."

"Why?"

"I'm not finished yet." I raise an eyebrow at him.

"Fine, I'll go sit down. You, bring me juice. Pineapple in variety."

I wander through to the living room and sink onto the couch. I fall asleep almost instantly and when I wake up I'm pretty sure I have dried drool on my face and just woke myself up because I snorted loudly in my sleep. Sexy.

"Edward?" I find him in the kitchen, two plates are covered on the bunker and he is cleaning up some pots because he doesn't like them being washed in the dishwasher. "How long was I asleep?"

"About an hour." He shrugs but doesn't turn to look at me, his shoulders are tense and I feel bad because I ruined his surprise.

"I am so sorry." I press myself into his back and feel like an inch tall.

"Don't worry about it." He finally turns and lets me snuggle into his embrace. "You've had a tiring week, I should have taken that into account when I was planning tonight."

"You should have nipped me to wake me up."

"Are you kidding? You're a monster when you don't wake up naturally." He laughs at me and I can't help but smile at his teasing.

"Whatever. You going to feed me now or what?" I nip his arm and skip away from him to take a seat at the table.

The surprise Edward had for me wasn't dinner, though that was delicious and nutritious, it was dessert. He keeps me waiting, putting on a show about how I don't really deserve it for falling asleep on him. It isn't until I threaten to throw down a sex embargo that he finally relents and places a box of Sprinkles cupcakes onto the table. I almost throw him down to the table and show him how obscenely grateful I was, I'm a total cupcake whore and I'll happily admit it to anyone.

"Why, Edward." I gasp at his big reveal. "I don't think anyone has ever bought me anything I've ever wanted more."

"It gets better." I reach for the box but he lightly smacks my hand away. It's like he wants to die.

"Don't Bogart the Sprinkles, Cullen, unless you don't want to live to see morning." I show him my stern face to back up the threat.

"I…uh…well…oh, fuck it…enjoy." HH He stammers before he gives the box a shove and it slides over to me.

"Are you feeling ok?" I frown, the box ignored as I focus on Edward. He looks a little nervous and that makes me nervous about opening the box. I have a niggling sick feeling that inside this box of sugary awesomeness is something more meaningful.

Like there's anything more meaningful than lemon coconut cupcakes.

"Yes, just open the box."

I slice through the Sprinkles logo with my nail and tentatively open the box. My suspicions are confirmed when I see a jewellery pouch wrapped in plastic to protect it from the frosting. I take a cake out and lick the frosting before I pull out the pouch. Edward still looks really nervous and if I didn't know him better I would be thinking this was a ring, but I know it isn't because I know he would never ask me to marry him in such an overly planned way.

Like all of our big moments together, our engagement will be unplanned and one of the best things to ever happen.

Yes, I have thought about it, considered our future and I'll say yes when the day comes. I already know that when he asks me I'll be confident in my answer.

I tentatively slide out what turns out to be a shitload of diamonds. It takes me a second to discern that it is a necklace and earrings and that they are absolutely stunning. They are also Harry Winston and that means an incredibly insane amount of money. I finger them a little, nervous about touching them in case I infected them with my normalcy.

"Edward…"

"Don't, don't say you can't accept them or that it's too much or that I'm insane."

"But, all of that is true."

"Accept them, please. I bought them for you to wear to the ball tomorrow."

"They aren't borrowed then? You actually bought these?" I place them on top of the pouch, pick up a cupcake and walk around the table to Edward. He still looks nervous and I can't refuse the gift because he cares so much that I like them.

"I bought them. For you." I straddle his lap and kiss him.

"I love them, I really do." His hands slide around my back and he finally smiles, the nerves fading away and leaving him looking adorable. So adorable, in fact, that I can't help but smear frosting across his mouth and licking it off.

"Is this how you will be choosing to eat from now on?"

"It's fun." I touch the cake to his nose and repeat the licking of the frosting. "You should try it." Within thirty seconds he is on his feet, one hand under my ass to support me and the other reaching for the cupcake box.

"I knew cupcakes were a great purchase." He mutters, kicking open the kitchen door in his rush to get me to the bedroom.

X~X~X

While indulging in some sexy times with frosting is pretty damn awesome at the time, the next day isn't so much fun. I find frosting in a multitude of places where it should never have been. Also, my favourite sheets have to be trashed, because there's no way we can get those back to the way they were. A sad day indeed.

Edward promises to make it up to me, but I can forgive him considering he bought me diamonds and he hadn't even done anything wrong. Besides, I'm happy to sacrifice a set of sheets for the good times that were had.

Watching his preparations for the ball makes me super jealous because all he does is shower and shave before slipping on his tux. I have to spend two hours with a hairdresser, plus all the time spent last night. Add on the twenty minutes it takes me to put make up on that makes me look like a passable sophisticated adult and that means too much time was spent on caring how I look this week.

Alice still has to drop my dress off but I'm ready, excited and bored. I wander about the house, trailing after Edward and imparting random information. We had discussed Greek gods and goddesses that sparked an interest in me and since then I had been reading about them whenever I had a moment. I'm like a factual puppy, never more than a foot away from him and reciting my newly learned facts.

I even offer to shave him, but for some reason he seems hesitant about that. I may be clumsy, but I'm not exactly Sweeny Todd.

Alice finally arrives and I let her in, full of smiles until she says a sentence that is bound to instil dread in anyone who hears it.

"Don't be mad, ok?"

"What have you done?" I keep my voice calm, but Alice is fully aware that one of the most fundamental rules when dealing with a pregnant woman is do not piss her off.

"You have to promise."

"I reserve the right to be mad." Alice looks a lot like Edward when she's nervous. She tries to pull off a pouty pleading look but I have managed to build up a level of immunity to it.

"So, I sold your dress." I laugh her admission incredulously.

"You what?"

"I found a better one for you, I promise, and so I sold the other one." She waves the garment bag in her hand at me and I'm intrigued by what's inside.

"Show me. Then I may or may not be mad."

She exhales a big sigh of relief and herds me into the living room where she hangs the bag on the door and rips down the zip with a flourish. Seriously, what is it with Cullens and flourishes?

I can't be mad at Alice once I see the replacement dress. It's a floor length black silk-organza and silk-satin tiered gown in black. It's absolutely beautiful and when she pulls out a pair of Mui Mui suede sandals from her bag I could kiss her because it's perfect for tonight.

"Oh, and this." She waves a clutch bag at me. "Are you mad?"

"No, this is beautiful. Thank you." She bounces up and hugs me tightly.

"I have to go, see you at the ball." She grins and disappears, pausing only to shout a few words to Edward about how he better remember to shine his shoes.

X~X~X

If I thought Edward looked sexy in general it was nothing compared to how he looked wearing a tux. I've never been a fan of formal wear but, damn, that man could pull it off. I couldn't stop grinning at him when he started rushing around at the last minute to shine his shoes.

I left him to it because it was difficult to watch without wanting to push him out of the way and take over. All I had to do was slip on my dress and I was ready. I would need Edward's help with the clasps on the jewellery. I've never been able to master that.

"Edward? Can you help me, please?"

He's waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me, hands in pockets and shoes on feet with a little smirk on his face. My heart skips a beat and I wish he had been my prom date because it would have made that evening so much better. He holds his hand out to me and I can't believe how lucky I've gotten.

"You look stunning." He pulls me into a hug, his nose grazing down my neck and along my collar bone.

"You look stunning too…in a manly way." I can't help but muss up his hair with my fingers because I hate it when it looks even half way neat.

"What help did you need?"

"Jewellery clasps."

He fastens the necklace clasp around my neck and I'm a little surprised at the heaviness of the diamonds and I enjoy the coolness on my skin.

"Your hand looks a little bare." He muses before walking over to the jacket he wore yesterday and throwing me a little box.

"You need to stop buying me stuff."

"Never." I open the box while he walks back over to me.

"I couldn't find any lions, but I figured tigers were a good substitute." I stare down at the silver ring, taking in the detail and the little tiger faces on it.

"It's perfect." He slips it on my finger.

"So are you."

X~X~X

Having never been to a ball I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Edward's parents sent a car for us and we picked Alice and Jasper up on the way. We were going to meet everyone else at the table. My stomach was already complaining loudly by the time we arrived and it seemed like everyone we passed knew Edward and Alice and just had to have an inane five minute conversation with them about nothing in particular.

I'm not averse to being sociable but I am averse to my stomach eating itself and knowing that there was a distinct lack of food getting to my baby. Edward's hand never left mine, he introduced me as his girlfriend and we both avoided mentioning our cub because these people were at best acquaintances who didn't really deserve to be in the loop. My dress also managed to cover my little bump so it wasn't an issue. I refused the glasses of champagne offered and finally managed to find a glass of water to sip while we made our way to the table.

When we finally reached it Emmett and Rosalie were already there along with Angela and Ben. Ben waved hello, the girls swooned over my dress and I over theirs and Emmett pinned my arms to my body in a weakened version of his bear hug.

"That was almost my wedding dress." Rose told me when I took my seat. "Imagine it in white."

"Oh, you would have looked amazing."

"Yeah, but it looks pretty kick ass in black and on you." She grinned.

We thankfully didn't have to wait long for the food to start arriving. Edward forked off the foods I wasn't allowed and soon Emmett started playing that game too, only with food I was allowed and he was cruising close to a total KO if he continued. I batted his fork away with mine and gave him a look that said if he wanted to have children one day he'd better stop playing with my food.

"Sorry." He had the grace to look somewhat mollified and we continued through the meal without any further incident.

There was a silent auction being held too, so once we had finished our meal Edward and I took time out to peruse what was being offered.

"I know you haven't been to one of these before, so I thought I'd better warn you." Edward said quietly in my ear, stroking his hand along my lower back. "You aren't guessing the price, you are buying. I don't want to have to deal with having a Mr Beaumont delivered to our place."

"Funny, Cullen, I've seen that episode of Friends. I know what I'm doing." He kissed my neck and snickered at me while I rolled my eyes.

I put a bid in for a guitar lesson with Josh Homme and a week in London at Claridges before Edward ushered me onto the dance floor. I'm not exactly the most coordinated of people, but when it came to dancing I could hold my own. Besides, it was all about letting the man lead, so if it was a bad dancing experience it was his fault. Edward was not a bad leader and he swept me across the dance floor and back to the table without me even standing on his toes once.

Jasper didn't give me the chance to sit down, he had me in his arms before I could catch my breath. He wasn't quite as graceful as Edward but he had me in hysterics telling me that Edward used to do ballet and had sworn him to secrecy.

"I don't think oaths of secrecy count when it comes to lovers." He smirked and I put my forehead on his shoulder to hide my red face.

"You're a bad secret keeper."

"I keep the ones that count, darlin'." The song ended and he kissed my hand with a bow before his hand was replaced by another. Assuming it was Emmett I allowed the hand to close around mine before looking up and realising that none other than Carlisle Cullen was leading me in a fine dance away from Edward.

"Good evening, Bella, you look enchanting." He smiled and it was warm and friendly.

"Good evening, Carlisle." I managed to respond.

"I'm pleased Edward brought you. I was hoping to have a word with you." He had danced us to the edge of the dance floor, he stepped off and gestured for me to follow suit.

"What word would that be, Carlisle?"

"The word would be sorry."

I caught my breath and looked at him quizzically. As much as I had hoped for that, it wasn't something I had ever expected. His eyes were just like Alice's when she thought I was going to be annoyed with her and I realised he was serious. He inclined his head toward a bench set against a wall and I sat just as he did.

"I'm a little confused." I admitted.

"Undoubtedly. I was a complete ass when we met. There was no excuse for it…well, I have my reasons."

"What reasons would they be? That you made an assumption about me without even having spoken to me? I'm not a gold digging whore, Carlisle, I'm a woman in love with your son who happens to be carrying his child."

"I understand that. I'm so very sorry." He did look suitably contrite. "I'm hard on Edward, unnecessarily so at times. There's something he doesn't know, Esme and I had a troubling time before he was born…"

He kept talking, telling me about his "troubling time" and the more he spoke the less I wanted to hear. I wasn't the one who should be listening to this, he should be talking to Edward. I realised that he was pretty drunk when he continued on and on.

"…well, the crux of the matter is, Edward isn't…." I stuck my fingers in my ears and shook my head vigorously at Carlisle.

"Lalalalalalalala. I can't hear you. Please stop talking." He did finally stop talking and he looked at me like I was an adorable little kitten mewling at him. He actually patted my head before pulling my hands away from my ears.

"I need to tell you this, it makes my reaction to you much more logical."

"You should be telling this to Edward, not me." I lowered my voice and smiled at a couple walking past who seemed incredibly interested in our conversation. I scanned the crowd and found Edward on the dance floor, glaring at his father and focusing on his hands restricting mine. He immediately let Alice go and started over to me. He was a foot away from us when Carlisle started talking again.

"How do I tell Edward that he isn't my son? That his mother lied to me for years and that I needed to make sure you weren't going to do the same thing to him?"

Edward stopped abruptly, his outstretched hand landing softly on my shoulder and bringing attention to the fact he was there to his father.

"I think you just did." I whispered, dazed by the exchange. Carlisle's hands fell to his side as I stood and wrapped mine around Edward's arm.

"I want to go home." Edward said, looking at Carlisle. I nod and let him go, rushing to gather our things. I don't have to go far before Alice speeds towards me, her hands full with my bag and Edward's jacket. She looks at me consumed by guilt that I don't understand and I take the things from her silently before she turns and runs back to Jasper. He gives me a sad little wink and I return to Edward who hasn't moved.

"Goodnight, Carlisle."

Edward is silent the entire ride home. He doesn't really look at me, he just manoeuvres his hand under the outer layers of my dress and absentmindedly rubs my bump. I catch his eye but there's nothing there, the shutters are down and all that's missing is a sign that reads closed for winter. He tries to smile at me but it's lacking his usual warmth and all I can think about is how to heal him.

"We're here." I slide to get out of the car but he doesn't move.

"I think I'll go home for a bit." He isn't looking at me and I don't know if he realises it but my heart just broke a little.

"We are home." I bite back tears but a pathetic little sniff breaks free and he finally looks at me.

"Shit. I'm sorry, I just wanted to find something at the apartment. It can wait." He swipes at an escaped tear and I hate myself for making this about me when it's all about him.

"No." I compose myself. "You go find what you need. I'll be here when you come home." He manages a real smile, it's small but I cling to it with all my might.

"I won't be long in coming home." He kisses me and I get out of the car to watch it pull away. I have his jacket in my hands and I slip into it because it smells like him, hoping that he'll find what he needs quickly because even though the jacket smells like him it's no substitute for the real thing.

X~X~X

**A/N: Massive thanks to ladyeire3 for being a kick ass pre-reader.**

**Massive thanks to all of you who read, review and recommend.**

**Links to outfits and such are on my profile, as well as a link to a banner made by jaimearkin for the twilight awards banner giveaway.**


	19. When Edward Goes Home

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything to do with Twilight: The Saga, but I do own these words.**

**QUICK PRE-CHAPTER A/N: Because I am fail and it has been so long since I last updated you should maybe refresh your memory of events in the last chapter by, er, re-reading the last chapter…just, you know, if you want. **

**Chapter 19 – Edward**

**When Edward Goes Home**

I felt numb. Completely devoid of any emotion except the one that told me that I had hurt Bella somehow. No, I knew exactly how I had hurt her. I had shut her out and called my apartment home. I watched her in the rear view mirror of the car, angled in the back seat as the driver pretended he wasn't watching us both. She stood looking fragile and beautiful in her black dress as she became smaller and smaller.

I would have stayed with her, I could have waited until morning to get what I so suddenly needed but she let me go and I couldn't be strong enough for her right now.

I didn't let myself think about much of anything. I thanked the driver when he pulled up in front of my building and I nodded to the new guy sitting behind the desk in the lobby. I've been spending so much time at Bella's that he doesn't realise that I live here and he tried to stop me. I took about thirty seconds to explain, not so politely, that I was going up to my apartment. I dangled my keys a little obnoxiously in front of his face and walked on. It then took me another thirty seconds to return the way I came to tell the doorman sorry for being an ass.

As I neared my apartment I began clenching and biting my jaw, making the muscle flex and for some reason it made me feel a little better. It was as if I could bite out the tension, one flex at a time. I stripped out of my clothes the second the door closed behind me. I had moved most of my clothes to Bella's house, so the only things I could find to change into were a pair of sweat pants and big Christmas sweater my Mom gave me a few years back. I secretly love it, even though I acted like I hated it. It's like the sweater Mark Darcy wears in Bridget Jones.

Yeah, I've seen that movie. Worst part? I liked it.

My phone hadn't stopped ringing since I left the party. I put it on silent but the glow from the screen illuminated the dark room, as I didn't bother to turn on any lights.

I felt like someone died. I felt like part of me died_._ Except, when someone dies I feel it keenly. It doesn't matter that I only knew them for hours or years, each person I haven't been able to save is etched on me in my own tribute to the lost I hold inside.

Just when the room fell dark, my phone illuminated again and the vibration made a noise that annoyed me so I reluctantly picked it up to peer at the screen. Alice's name appears emblazoned across the screen and I hit reject. I didn't miss the look she gave Bella or the look on Jasper's face. She knew. She knew that the man who brought us both up wasn't a part of me. I wasn't a part of him. Jasper knew too. His loyalty lies with his wife, as it should be, but I'm his best friend. I felt fully betrayed by both of them.

One of the most angering parts of how this happened was that there was no way Alice would be able to tell me that she didn't see it coming. There was no way she didn't know this was about to erupt. By not intervening she fundamentally allowed this to happen.

Jasper's name came up on my screen next and I ignored that call too. I knew they wouldn't give up any time soon, but I could ignore it for a while. I sent a text to Bella, telling her I loved her, and switched my phone off without waiting for a reply.

I couldn't stop thinking about who else might have known. The people I trusted the most in my life definitely knew. Mom, Dad, Alice and Jasper. Those are the four people who were meant to have my back no matter what life threw at me. It didn't matter what kind of bullshit sniping was going on, there was always a zero tolerance on lies. Now I find out that I've been lied to for a large portion of my life and it has ripped through my cosy existence.

I walked through to my bedroom and opened up the closet to rummage through the boxes sitting on the floor, looking for my journal. Yes, I'm a journal keeper. We shouldn't all be judged by the poetry writing emo morons who do this. Some people enjoy musing on life as a whole without it being a precursor to self-harm.

It didn't take long for me to the find the right box among the few that remained. I flicked through the journal entries until I came across the one I was so desperately seeking. I'm not entirely sure why I wanted to relive it, the day the attitude change happened. It must have been when he learned I wasn't his. There's no other explanation for it.

I read my melodramatic prose and I am so glad I'm not as sensitive anymore. It's difficult to reconcile who I am now with this teenager who favours wallowing in his self-pity for longer than is considered polite. As I read, I remembered Dad taking blood because I was feeling run down. We talked about catching a football game at the weekend. The next day he was cold. That was the day he looked at me like something inside him had died and, no matter what I did to revive it, it never came back.

I ripped out the pages as I read them, balling them up individually and throwing them across the room. I continued reading past that day until all that was left in my hands was the empty covers of the journal. I tossed that across the room too and scrubbed my face roughly with a groan.

Loud knocking startled me out of my funk and I rolled my eyes. I thought that Alice would at least give me twelve hours before risking my wrath. I considered not answering for a minute, but the knocking became incessant and I started to worry it might disturb my neighbours.

I opened the door expectantly but instead of Alice standing looking repentant, I was presented with Emmett looking pretty pissed at me. He didn't wait for an invitation but instead nudged me out of the way none too gently and closed the door behind him.

"Talk." He instructed, and I found myself trailing behind him as he walked into my kitchen and opened the fridge.

"About what?"

"About why Bella just called Rose and Rose stopped grinding on me to high tail it out of the house with little explanation. You cock blocked me without even saying a word and there better be a solid explanation for it." He huffed, teasing and annoyance littering his tone with equally. He slammed the fridge shut and leaned against it, taking a moment to text someone before turning his attention back to me.

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"Well, tough shit."

"Fuck you." I slammed my fist onto the counter to emphasize my words and instantly regretted it. Pain shattered through my hand and I cursed what could have been a surgeon dream killer. I kicked the trashcan to distract from my sore hand and Emmett's hand landed on my shoulder.

"Edward, relax man."

"I'm finding it awfully difficult to do that." I admit through my clenched jaw, trying to maintain calm through being overly formal. I'm lucky teeth don't shatter easily because the amount of tension in my mouth would have resulted in some serious mouth gashes. Emmett guided me by the shoulder to my dining table and sat me down. I started to worry for a moment that his hand would remain and start massaging me but he lifted it away as soon as I was seated and sat opposite me.

"So, your Dad was pretty drunk at the ball..." He used this as an opening gambit and I saw a glimpse into the way he operates. He and Bella are alike in so many ways, going straight to the point because what's the point in wasting time? It's something I admire in both of them.

"Yeah."

"You know I'm not leaving until you're straightened out and on your way home, right?"

With a sigh I told Emmett everything, more than I've ever told anyone about my relationship with my Dad and about everything that went down earlier tonight. I told him about the day Carlisle Cullen stopped looking at me like a son and more like an alien invading his home. He listened without comment, his fingers drumming softly on the table.

Somebody began to knock on the door as we sat in silence. I motioned to him to ignore it but he answered it anyway. I could hear a muffled conversation and I didn't recognise the other voice. I craned my head around the wall to look at who was at my door.

"Who was that?" I asked when the interloper had been shut out.

"I have a part time assistant to deal with some of the more boring stuff in my life." Emmett admits, putting the delivery on the table in front of me. Beer and tequila seem to be on the menu.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked disingenuously.

"It's not something I recommend often, Edward, but fuck it. Let's get drunk."

X~X~X

If I had ever been filled with any doubts about Emmett becoming a proper friend to me they were laid to rest by the amount of time and alcohol we killed. He stayed with me through the night, matching me shot for shot. He even called for another bottle when we finally reached the worm. We sat and flicked through the sports channels and paused on the news the next day when reports of his no show at practice were doing the rounds.

"I'll take the hit, pay the fine. Family comes first." He punched me in the shoulder and I welled up like a little girl.

My phone remained off and the guilty voice in my head began to shout at me about Bella. As soon as I thought her name Emmett's phone started to ring and I saw her name on the screen. His ringtone for her was White Wedding by Billy Idol and I realised I really appreciated Emmett's sense of humour.

_Hey little sister, what have you done?_

_Hey little sister, who's the only one?_

_Hey little sister, who's your superman?_

_Hey little sister, who's the one you want?_

_Hey little sister, shotgun._

He left the room to answer the call and I answered the knock at the door, expecting it to be the delivery guy with our food. Instead, I was confronted with Jasper who looked as rough as I felt.

"Can I come in?"

"Can I trust you not to lie to me about something in there not being mine?" I glared at him but let him through the doorway.

We sat in silence until Emmett came back and I drank to fill the time. Jasper held his hand out to take the bottle from me for a drink and I passed it over.

"I'm sorry." The liquid sloshed in the bottle as he took another swig.

"How long did you know?"

"Since before Alice told me."

"You and your fucking mojo." I shook my head and projected as many shitty feelings as I could at him like the asshole I am. He visibly flinched so I pulled it back a little because I didn't want him throwing up all over my floors. "You didn't tell me because…?"

"When Alice confirmed it, she begged me not to tell. She thought it would rip all of you apart and that it wasn't fixable…I wanted to tell you…I never wanted to hurt you or betray you." He dropped his head into his hands and it almost looked like he was about to cry.

"Jesus, Jas', no need to weep about it." I rolled my eyes. "It isn't even you I'm mad at."

With the clarity of a drunk man I had realised that the person I should be mad at was my Mom. She was the one who lied to us all. I was mad as hell at Carlisle too, and still a little mad at Alice because we had always been a team and this had unearthed a fracture in our us-against-the-world united front.

"I appreciate that, but when you sober up you'll realise that you are still mad at me and you should be. I'll ride that out though, because…"

"If you say I'm worth it I'm taking your man card by force and burning it with the glare from my eyes," I interrupted.

"That isn't even possible."

"Try me." I took the bottle back and downed a couple of swigs, knowing full well he was right but that it wasn't going to do any lasting damage.

X~X~X

"Have you thought about names for the kid yet?" Emmett was lounging across my couch, still drinking like a condemned man even though I had slowed down. Jasper had commandeered the bottle of tequila and was cradling it like it held the meaning of life.

"Bella and I haven't talked about it yet. I think we both thought that it would be a jinx." I sat there scribbling shapes on a piece of journal paper. An hour ago Emmett picked them up and read out excerpts. It proved to everyone in the room that I was a bit of a douche. Eventually what I was scribbling started to become clear and I realised that I had started to design Simba's crib.

"I think Jasper is an awesome name for both a boy and a girl."

"Emmettina has a distinct ring to it."

"A ring of shit, maybe." Emmett rolled off the couch and slammed Jasper into the floor in a move that belied his blood alcohol level.

"Guys, watch the floors. I don't want to have to get anything redone before I sell this place." I didn't even bother to lift my eyes from the paper as I sketched in solid lines.

"Pick a name." Jasper had somehow managed to slip from under Emmett and had his knee in the small of his back. I could have warned Emmett that Jasper was a college wrestler and that even though he writes for a living he also trains like a pro athlete, but it was far more fun to let him discover that fact the hard way.

"I'm going to break both your hearts and categorically say that my child will bear neither of your names. Now, break it up or I'll call your mothers."

"Hey, Edward, do you have Top Gun?"

"I've witnessed enough homo-eroticism for the day, thanks very much."

Emmett and Jasper violated my alphabetised DVD collection while I immersed myself in the little crib sketch I had started. I could hardly wait to show it to Bella. But before I could go home there were a few people I had to see and I was simply far too drunk to go anywhere.

"I need coffee."

X~X~X

It took the rest of the day and night to feel safe enough to drive. I dropped Emmett off and then Jasper and I went to his place.

I needed to see Alice. I had to be sure that she knew that the damage that had been done wasn't irreparable.

As soon as we walked through the door she latched on to me. Her little arms locked around my waist and her face was almost instantly wet with tears. I patted her silly short hair and let out a sigh.

"Alice. Let go of me." She shook her head.

"I don't want to, I'm sorry, I don't want you to hate me."

"I don't hate you, I know you're sorry. We need to talk."

Jasper, who chose to continue drinking mainly to numb himself to my still tumultuous emotions, stumbled past us. He smacked Alice on the ass and rebounded off the door frame before disappearing into the kitchen.

Alice began to stumble through her explanation. She visibly shook as she told me all she knew. As it turned out, both our parents were aware that she knew. Alice would always try to mediate in the arguments we had over the years and hated when Carlisle would try to compare us. As she was talking, I realised that he did that quite often, not that I ever cared because I was so proud of everything Alice achieved, whether it put my own efforts in the shade or not.

"I've thought of telling you, Edward, but any way I thought of trying ended up in our family being ripped apart. I think that we can get through this now, because of Bella. She's the one who will keep us all together."

"I'm not putting that on Bella. It isn't her responsibility to repair our damaged family."

"It isn't, but she will. You, Bella and the baby as a unit, you'll save us all from splintering."

"That's why you didn't stop him the other night."

"Yes."

"What do we do?"

"I can't tell you that." Her head dipped and she held it in her hands.

"Alice, I love you but you're so frustrating sometimes." I threw her a small smile that she returned.

"I know."

~X~X~

As I left Alice to look after her vomiting husband, I started to realise that this wasn't something that I can fix in a day. I loved her and Jasper but he was right about there being latent resentment. It wasn't something that I could consciously control and I could only hope that it wouldn't be long lasting. I borrowed Jasper's car and notice that I don't really pay attention to how close I was to a wall when I pulled away.

Apparently, passive aggression is in the Edward house.

For a moment I considered driving straight back to Bella. I missed her. I knew that she'd comfort me and make me feel like this isn't the end of the world. She would remind me of the family we are beginning to build. I was also eager to show her the crib I had sketched and hopeful that she'd like it.

The drive didn't take long and I soon pulled up in front of my parents' house. The sky had turned dark and I could see a burst of sunset colours behind the house, miles away but still so vivid. The lights were on, but I hoped that no one was home. I considered letting myself in but found that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Something stopped me and I considered that maybe it was the thought that I don't belong here. This house isn't mine, and this family doesn't feel like mine anymore either.

It took me a minute of standing in front of the door to bring myself to knock upon it. Mom opened it immediately and I realise that she had been waiting for me to knock. I idly wondered what she would have done if I had just turned and walked away.

I don't think I could have walked away, I was always going to need to have this conversation at some point. It may as well be today. I could have stewed over this for weeks. Before Bella and Cub I probably would have. In months she had changed me in so many ways for the better. I needed to make it clear to Mom and Dad that she was the reason I was standing before them.

Mom immediately tried to hug me but I just couldn't bring myself to accept it. I hated to see the hurt in her eyes but she masked it fairly quickly because she knew she kind of deserved it. I could hear Dad moving in the library, so I walked through to see him.

He paused his hand mid-air while putting a book back on a shelf. The man is pale at the best of times but his face turned almost white and his eyes grew big like he was shocked at his own reactions.

"Edward, I'm sorry. So sorry." His head dropped and began to shake from side to side, light from the fire glinting across the moisture building in his eyes. I stood there dumb founded at this display of emotion coming from him. Before I could even react to anything happening around me he crossed the room and roughly pulled me into an embrace that I couldn't return.

He began to sob, the vibrations crashing against me like the ocean against rocks trying to wear them down. I could feel Mom beside us, not knowing what to do. I didn't know what to do in this foreign situation either except to stand there and accept the emotion that was being thrown at me. Years of pent up sorrow was being spent on my shoulder and I felt like he was comforting himself instead of me.

I felt like I was being violated. Not in a good way either.

I pulled myself out of his arms and cleared my throat. As the awkwardness began to descend, I looked away to let him compose himself. He finally moved to sit down on the chesterfield sofa that lived in the room and I followed his lead. He sat watching me warily and I stared back at him unabashedly. I took in his Nordic colouring, his pale skin and blue eyes that should have been a lifelong clue that I didn't belong to him. I'm quick to tan like Mom and have her eyes. I guess I should be thankful that I can lay claim to some genetic marker belonging to someone in the room.

Our faces are different shapes and I can't recall ever looking at a member of the Cullen side of the family and thinking that I looked like them. I should probably have known, but if you take something for granted then why would you ever look for something wrong?

"You will be expecting answers." He rarely speaks in anything other than statements these days. He used to engage with me, he probably still does with Alice in the rare moments he lets his guard down.

"They would be nice." I nodded. Mom sat on the seat opposite us unable to look me in the eye.

"I think that I should explain." She said and he nodded. As Mom talked Carlisle patted my arm. I think that maybe now that this big dark secret is out in the light of day he is allowing himself to realise that he really does love me.

Mom began to explain that she and Carlisle were friends back in the day when they were both at university. He was in love with her but she didn't reciprocate. I found this hard to fathom considering her devotion to him now.

"Your Dad, he used to hang out with this crowd of likeminded students who thought they were going to change the world. I would go to the parties and spend time with them. I started dating one of them, a man called Charles."

"Charles was my best friend." Interjected Carlisle. "If Esme couldn't be happy with me I was happy that she chose Charles, I thought he was a good man."

"We became engaged, but he changed, he turned violent and I turned to Carlisle for help. I found out I was pregnant with you and I knew I couldn't marry him, I couldn't expose you to the risk of abuse." Mom's voice broke and I switched seats, pulling her into a hug.

"Thank you for that." I was serious, I wouldn't have wanted to grow up in a home with my biological father if he was going to beat my Mom. I would have ended up killing the man.

"You were my priority. I spent the night with Carlisle around the same time. I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't entirely sure who the father was, something that I never admitted to Carlisle. I didn't disabuse him of his notion that I was no longer sleeping with Charles." She broke down properly this time.

I wasn't enjoying this little run through the past. Hearing about your parent's sex life is bad enough, but to hear your Mom cheated on your biological dad with someone who you thought was your actual Dad is pretty low on my list of awesome.

"When I found out she was pregnant I assumed that you were mine." Carlisle told me. "I assumed that she was no longer sleeping with Charles and that the only solution was to remove him from the equation. I went to him, told him I was in love with Esme, and that he wasn't going to hurt her ever again."

The saying that when you assume you make an ass out of you and me ran through my head and I barely stopped myself from saying it out loud.

"He proposed to me after seeing Charles and I said yes. I had fallen in love with him."

"So, you decided to not be honest?"

"I'm not proud of myself. I should have told your Dad. I should have been honest. But, you were my priority and I wanted you to have the best life you could have and that included Carlisle as your father."

One of the most annoying things about this was that I knew exactly what she was talking about. I could see the logic in what she was saying and in the decisions she made back then. I was still angry and hurt, but I understood.

As much as I had wanted answers and some sort of light to be shed upon my parentage, I was extremely aware of the stifling atmosphere and I needed to leave to get some perspective.

"I have to get out of here." I told my parents. "I just need to have some time." I tightened my arm around Mom's shoulders momentarily before getting up. I paused to briefly clap my hand on Carlisle's shoulder and left them. I couldn't get out of that house quick enough. I could barely even breathe and when I got into the car it took me a full minute to calm down and I narrowly avoid a panic attack.

I think I liked it more when Dad was just an everyday asshole instead of having a legitimate claim to being a prick.

~X~X~X~X~

I drove around aimlessly, mostly to empty Jasper's gas tank and it didn't take me long to realise that I was headed to Bella, headed home. I had missed her, her soft electric touch and her smell that I've come to associate with happiness. I want her to smile and to laugh, either with or at me. I love it when she laughs, it bursts out of her accompanied by this look of surprise. It's like I've delighted her and she's shocked by how much. I hope that our baby gets that same look.

By the time I get home it's late and all the lights are off. Rosalie's car sat in the street and I wasn't surprised by its presence. I fully expected to be beaten to within an inch of my life with her words. I walked into the house expecting to be lawyered the second my foot hits the tile but instead a whispered greeting meets me.

"Welcome home." Rosalie was sitting in the dark watching television.

"Hey." I replied lamely as I dropped onto the sofa beside her and let my head fall back, like it weighs more than my neck can feasibly carry.

"Rough couple of days, huh?" She knuckled the top of my arm and I realised that this is probably as close to affection as I can expect to see from her right now. It kind of hurts.

"Could say that. Where's Bella?"

"She went up to bed a couple of hours ago. She's probably just lying awake in the dark. I don't think she sleeps that well without you now. Which is both sweet and sickening, I can't decide which." She grinned at me and watched me out of the corner of her eye.

"You and Emmett both, right?" I laughed. "I'm going to head up to see her, I don't sleep that well without her either."

"You might want to wash the smell of stale whiskey and coffee off." She snorted, waving me off.

The house was warm and almost silent, the murmur of voices from the television only reached half way up the stairs. I stepped into the bathroom to do as Rosalie suggested, and washing the day off felt great. It was as if I could feel some of the tension from the past two days rinse down the drain. I used some of Bella's lemon body wash stuff and realised that I like it more than I probably should.

When I snuck into the bedroom I could hear her breathing and it made me feel a little bit calmer. It reassured me that she wasn't pretending, so I began to tread even quieter because I didn't want to disturb her. I slipped between the covers and let the bed hug me. It is seriously the most comfortable bed I've ever had the pleasure of being in.

Bella's skin was warm under my touch and goosebumps broke out across her back when I put my hand on it. I could feel her heartbeat through her soft skin and was pleased to find it echoed mine.

"Edward?" Her voice was groggy and was the best thing I had heard since this shit storm began. I scooted closer to her and wrapped my arms around her body, skimming her swollen belly. Her hand reached up to stroke across my face and scrunch into my hair. We both sighed deeply and it made me laugh, feeling lighter than I had all day.

"I missed you." I told her neck between kisses.

"I missed you too." I could hear the smile in her voice.

"Emmett and Jasper want us to name our child after them."

"Over my cold dead body."

"I really do love you, you know?"

"I'm really glad you came back." Bella turned in my arms to kiss me.

"I was always going to come back to you. I was always coming home."

"Home. I like that." Her mouth graced my face with a multitude of kisses until I caught it with my own.

"I want to tell you everything that happened." I admitted between kisses, needing her to remind me that it was all going to be ok. Her fingers curled the hair at the nape of my neck, and her eyes locked onto mine in the darkness.

"Tell me in the morning, it won't seem as bad in the morning." Bella yawned halfway through her sentence. I snuggled in closer, moving us both down the bed. I smoothed her hair away from her eyes and kissed her temple.

"Sleep tight, my love."

"Don't let the bedbugs bite."

~X~X~X~X~

**A/N: **Hi! I am really hoping that everybody hasn't flounced this story because of my extreme lack of updating! I don't know when the next chapter will be up, but it is started and I PROMISE that it won't be nearly as long between updates in future!

Special thanks to my shiny new beta AvidReader416 and my pre-reader ladyeire3

Thanks for reading and reviewing :D x


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